11 Small Kindnesses From Strangers and What They Became Years Later: a Blanket at a Bus Stop and Bus Fare in a Snowstorm

At sixteen, I was a quarter short for fries at a diner, and the man behind me put a dollar on the counter without looking up from his newspaper. I have paid for a stranger’s fries at least once a year since then, and I still don’t know his name. These 11 small kindnesses from strangers grew into something much bigger years later.

1. Age 9 → today: A woman gave a cold kid a blanket at the bus stop, and the kid still has it.

I was nine years old, waiting for the school bus in a Wisconsin winter. I had a thin coat, no hat or gloves. A woman driving past saw me and stopped, giving me a blanket from the back of her car. It was a long skinny one, so she wrapped it around my head and shoulders like a big scarf.

I remember thanking her, but being confused. I told her I didn’t know how I would give it back when I was done borrowing it. She hugged me and said not to worry. I still have that blanket.

2. High school → to this day: A restaurant worker dug through the dumpster for a stranger’s car keys.

So once in high school, I ate at a Mexican restaurant and unknowingly threw away my car keys on my tray when I was done eating. I went and asked a worker if he had cleared them off the table and he said no, but that he had just taken the trash out to the dumpster. I remember going outside and calling my dad to ask if there was a spare and he told me no.

So I went back inside feeling humiliated and about to ask if I could look through the dumpster only to see that this man had already dug through the dumpster on my behalf and ended up finding my keys for me. He just went above and beyond and to this day I am so grateful for his help.

3. Laid off → doing better: A woman paid for a new parent’s groceries, and now they do the same.

A lady bought me groceries once.

I was completely financially hosed, too. My daughter had just been born maybe 3 weeks before, and the bills were just starting to show up. So of course I get laid off. Right before Christmas, so I’ve already spent most of my cash on presents. I was in a BAD way. Terrified I was going to let my family down.

So there I am in the grocery store trying to buy formula and other stuff to keep us fed with WIC coupons. And this lady ahead of me in the line is having NONE of it. She pays for everything the coupons didn’t cover. I told her I was okay (I wasn’t, she must have sensed it), and she insisted.

I’ve never forgotten it. Now that I’m doing better I always keep an eye out for opportunities to do the same.

We were a poor family. My mom had made a point of saving up enough once to take my sister and I to the zoo & museum. We had a great day, even ate out.

Then, on the way to the bus stop heading home, she realized she’d overspent & didn’t have enough to pay for all three of us to get there. We were looking at a 6 mile walk, and it had just started snowing.

We duck into a small Chinese restaurant & ask if we can use the phone (mom was going to ask someone for a ride). The owner asks us why we needed the phone and after mom explains, he not only gave us the money we needed to get on the bus, but also sent us home with enough food to feed 6 people.

My mom told him we’d try to pay him back one day, but he asked we pay it forward instead. It was the first random act of kindness that I’d ever received & sticks with me 30 years later.

5. No diploma → a scholarship: A fast-food manager paid the $50 test fee for a new hire’s GED.

During an interview for a minimum wage, fast food job, the manager asked why I didn’t have a high school diploma or GED. After explaining why I had neither, he offered me the job and to pay for me to get my GED.

If I passed, I didn’t owe him a thing. If I failed, I owed him the $50 it took for me to take the test. I passed and even won a one year academic scholarship to the community college that I went through to get my GED.

While I did not excel at being a student once again, I never would have had the opportunity to learn that without that manager’s generosity. I am forever thankful for the risk that man took on me. I wouldn’t be where I’m at without him.

6. College → years later: A girl he had met the night before knitted him a scarf overnight.

As a young man, my social skills were... sub-optimal. That made for a lot of very lonely times in college — especially in the dead of winter in a rural, northern community.

Anyway, one day I met a really sweet girl who could see past my horrible flaws and insufficiencies. We got to talking, and discovered that we both wanted to catch a lecture that night, but neither of us had anyone to go with. We spontaneously decided to go together.

The speaker was really interesting, and afterward, we walked around in the snow, talking about a lot of things and nothing in particular. Although we lived on different sides of the campus, we agreed to meet for lunch the next day.

At the appointed time, she greeted me and handed me a brown paper bag. It contained a multi-colored, Dr. Who length, hand knitted scarf.

The previous night, she’d noted how cold I was, and decided to spend her night making a gift for me. No agenda, romantic or otherwise. Just “here ya go, I hope you like it.”

That scarf became my trademark. I wore it for years.

7. Age 10 → today: A server gave the benched kid the biggest ice cream cone.

When I was 10+/-, I played Little League. When the team won a game, everyone would go to the Dairy Barn for an ice cream cone to celebrate. Had a [strict] coach one year who determined that if you didn’t play in the game, you didn’t get an ice cream.

I didn’t play one game that we won (I wasn’t very good anyway) but still I went to the Dairy Barn just to hang with my friends. Others usually went home. The lady server asked me what I wanted and I told her that I couldn’t have one because I didn’t play in the game. She gave me a funny look, and went on to the next customer.

Later, as we were sitting at the outdoor picnic tables, this same lady came out and gave me a HUGE ice cream cone. “You’re still a winner,” she said and walked away. I still choke up a little when I think about it.

8. 10 years later: A mechanic fixed a student’s car with one screw and said, “Pass it on.”

About 10 years ago I was driving home for a [break] from college. About 30 minutes into the drive and I start hearing a loud smacking sound under the front of my car, immediately I’m like, “Oh, what’s that?” So I get off the freeway at the next exit I see, it’s a little 1 intersection town in the middle of Michigan.

As luck would have it there happened to be a small car shop right in the town. I tell them what’s going on with the car and one of the guys is like, “Let me take a listen.” The guy looks under the car and is like, “Oh here’s the problem”, walks into the shop and comes back with a screwdriver and one screw.

He shows me that a piece of plastic under the bumper came loose and was smacking the road when the car was moving. I feel like a fool and ask him what I owe. He’s like, “Eh, $10 is all,” but they didn’t take credit and I had no cash. The guy is like, “No big deal.”

I thanked him a bunch and he just said, “Be sure to pass it on one day.” I’ll never forget.

9. Age 4 → 20 years later: A boy at the airport gave away his toy car “as proof that we were friends”.

When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, I made friends with another kid in an airport, and he was playing with a couple glued together [toy] cars.

Me and that kid played for like an hour with those things and when it was time to go our separate ways and board the plane, the kid insisted I keep one of the cars, and while I insisted he should keep them, he said it was proof that we were friends, and to this day roughly 20 years later, I still have that car packed up with my childhood mementos box.

That friend of mine was a good kid. Hope he’s doin well.

10. 17 → almost 15 years later: A pawn shop owner sent a broke teenager home with food.

I had a really rough few years after high school. Kicked out at 17, no family to lean on, in the middle of a small town with nowhere to go. Went to a local pawn shop one day with my most ’valuable possessions’. They weren’t worth jack, but I just wanted money for food.

The shop was pretty dead, so the owner just started talking with me for a little bit. He asked why I was selling all this stuff. I didn’t give him a lot of details, but somehow, he knew what I was going through. He told me to sit tight while he went to go add some stuff up.

He came back with two big bags of food, and a few bucks cash. Told me that he had a rough start in life and he gets it. Said he wasn’t gonna buy any of my stuff because I deserved to keep those pieces of myself. He was genuinely kind, and I felt seen for the first time in a long time.

It’s been almost 15 years since then, and I can’t remember his name, although I wish I could, but I will never forget his kindness. Ever. Thank you, and I will always remember.

11. 22 years later: “Promise me that you’ll keep reading.”

When I was a kid we didn’t have a lot of money, so we often shopped at thrift stores. What I loved about that was that you could get 10 books for a dollar, so I would plant myself in front of the book section and make piles of which one I wanted to get.

One day an older lady saw me sitting with my piles and asked if I liked to read. She smiled and then pulled a dollar out of her purse, handed it to me and said, “Promise me that you’ll keep reading.” I was so happy and immediately stood up and said that I would. She smiled and walked away and I went back to my piles able to pick out an extra 10 books to take home.

It was just a small act of kindness for her, but for me having a random stranger encourage my love of reading and making me promise to never stop definitely had a lot to do with my continued love of reading. This was probably 22-23 years ago, but I still think of her whenever I buy a new book.

The people who gave almost never find out how the story ends. The woman at the thrift store will never know that one dollar turned into more than 20 years of books, and the man at the diner will never hear about the fries.