Random acts of kindness

Have you seen the new Ford commerical with the girl picking up her dry cleaning? She sees that the guy in line behind her is a hottie (and he's driving a Ford), so she tells the woman at the window that she'd like to pay for his dry cleaning too...and asks her to pass on her phone number. So I know that this commerical isn't really about random acts of kindness...it's about how to flirt in the dry cleaning line. But, it got me thinking about how nice it would be to do that in the Starbucks drive thru sometime...or any drive thru for that matter.

A few weeks ago I was grocery shopping by myself, which rarely happens, and as I finish loading my trunk with all of my groceries a girl about my age came up and said she'd take my cart. I thought that it was so nice. Things like that don't seem to happen very often. So the next time I was at the grocery store and saw a young mother putting her groceries in the car & piling the kids in, I offered to take her cart for her.

This morning I went to grab coffee with a friend. We went to Plymouth Cafe, which donates it's profits to low income housing. There was a homeless (?) woman standing outside asking for someone to buy her coffee. I get asked for money at least twice a day, so I just said sorry and kept walking. But my friend said, 'Sure'. So the three of us went into the coffee shop and ordered our coffee. The woman only wanted a cup of black coffee, but my friend asked her if she was hungry and if she wanted something to eat. The woman seemed really surprised by her generosity and ordered some fruit and a yogurt. Even the cashier seemed surprised that my friend was offering to buy this woman breakfast & coffee. This was one of the nicest things that I think I've seen in quite some time.

I think that I'm going to try to make it a point to do once nice thing for someone else every day. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone tried to do that? Just one nice thing a day...it doesn't have to cost money. It could be just opening the door for someone or picking up a dropped book for someone whose arms are full. So I'm going to try it and I'll let you know how it goes.