Kindness from a stranger
 

So, you might have read about me losing my wallet while in Chicago 2 weeks ago.

After retracing my steps from the restaurant to the hotel (about 500 feet, if that...the restaurant is just around the corner and across the street from the hotel), I asked the counter guy at the hotel if a wallet was turned in. He said no, and advised me to cancel everything right away b/c it was most likely gone...this was only 10 minutes after I noticed it missing. And he actually sounded concerned...I would assume that this has happened before.

After I canceled everything, I went downstairs to inquire about getting my car out of the parking garage. (There is no actual hotel garage...you have to use a public garage next to the building, and the hotel offers validated discount parking.) It would have cost a minimum of $19 to get it out of the car (based on the amount of time it would wind up being in there--over 10 hours), and I only had $7 to my name. I also happened to mention that I would have to drive back to St. Louis the next day.

The guy didn't even hesitate when I asked him..."Don't worry. We'll take care of you." He took $15 out of his own wallet and put it into the hotel's till, then took one of the free parking stickers out of the till and put it on my garage ticket. (I'm assuming that the $15 is what it cost the hotel to buy each of those stickers.) Then he asked if I needed gas money. When I replied that I didn't, he said, "Here, you'll need to eat some breakfast in the morning," and gave me $10, again out of his own wallet. "You can pay me the next time you're here," he said.

This guy only knew me as a hotel guest. And yet, he gave me $25 of his own money. And I didn't even get his name.

As irritating as all this was, it's nice to know that people can still be decent to one another. I meant to send an e-mail to the manager there, but forgot...I'll do so tomorrow.

Good people make me smile.

With all the other shit we get wrong, it's good to know that this swirling mass of humanity spits out some winners.

-sm

Re: Kindness from a stranger
 

It was the least he could have done after finding your wallet, buying $600 wortha gas, $1000 wortha asian hookers, and several poundsa grass with the cards and cash.

He probly only *has* that job just so he can collect drunken visitors' wallets, then act like a good guy by lending a small fraction of the booty back to the victim. Then the cycle continues.


OR


maybe he's really a nice guy. Cynical, me? No. :)

Damn big city folk and yer cynicism. :)

There are still some good people out there. Anymore it may seem that they are few and far to far between but they still exist. From helping others myself I've found why many people likely don't help when they have the chance.

One example would be...

Its the first snow of the year some kid that I'm guessing just got his lisence passes me on a gravel road. There is about three inches of slush and he begins to spin out. I yank the wheel and head towards the ditch. I correct and am in perfect shape to keep going down the road but wait... Here he is still spinning out I either pull the wheel hard and go into this steep ditch maybe roll the car or t-bone him drivers side. So I yank the wheel and he finds himself in the ditch as well. I get lucky the car doesn't roll but no way am I driving it out. I get out of the car walk over to his and make sure he's alright. I wanted to yell, and scream because of his stupidity (But I wasn't being much smarter than he was I was going 65-70 in the sloppy mess). He's fine bumped his leg pretty good. So I tell him I'll be back shortly. I didn't have my cell phone on me so I walk a mile or better to the first house I see with lights on. The guy gets his tractor and pulls us both out. I asked if he needed anything for his troubles. He said that he thought for both cars 50 dollars would be fair. So I pay the man the full 50 dollors. The kid is standing right there saw the transation take place. He runs to his car and leaves. Doesn't say sorry, thanks, nothing! This made me even madder than I already was. To top it off I had three flat tires in the morning after airing out in the drive that night. If I was normal after that I would have stopped caring. But still to this day when someone is in need I'm there to help. Someone has a flat tire I pull over and offer to help, often times end up changing the tire myself because more people don't have a clue how to. *shakes head* Whats hard about changing a tire?

Anyways remember putting yourself in a place to help often means you're also putting yourself in a place to be taken advantage of. Don't let that stop you, the reward of knowing you helped someone should be reward enough.

I need to quit posting such long replies...blah Sorry for boring you all. I'm windy but at least its from the top and not the bottom where it stinks :D

I once walked off Amtrak after a 4 day business trip and I left behind an envelope with allll my receipt for train fare, hotel, meals, etc. in it. I'm sure i could still have extracted reimbursement from my employer based on credit card statements and such, but it would have been a pain. After I got home & realized it was missing I called Amtrak; no luck. The next day I receive a phone call from a woman who found the tickets, figured out my phone number from something in the envelope, and said she'd be happy to mail the stuff back to me if I needed it.

The good things that have happened. I can only think of two.

When I was 16 my car broke down infront of this guys house in the middle of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He and his son helped me push it to the curb. I found out what was wrong with it. The serpantine belt had broke. It just happened that I had the right size wrench in the car to fix it. But I didn't have enough money to buy a new belt after awhile the guy came in and bought the belt for me. He wouldn't take the money I had on me. I sent him a Christmas card that year taking him for having helped me that day.

The second I was on a business trip out to New Jersey. While I stopped at a truck stop I sat down and left my note book laying on the table. It had all my reciepts in the pocket of it. I couldn't remember for the life of me where I had left it. A few weeks later a packet came in the mail. It was my note book. It didn't have a return address so I don't know if someone picked it up and mailed it or if the truck stop itself did the deed.

These are great tales, guys, and do much to restore my faith in humanity (in small doses at least).

But I still wonder ... why is it that people with " practice random acts of kindness" bumperstickers are more likely to cut you off in traffic, causing you to lock up your brakes to avoid a random act of extreme damage, AND they give YOU the the finger, as though it were your own recklessness that nearly caused a multicar colllision?

Because if you look close, in the small print....that bumper sticker really says...

Practice Random Acts of Kindness, Senseless Acts of Beauty, and Massive Acts of Stupidity

Yup....it's there. You just have to squint to see it!

Dagney

I gave a complete drunken stranger a ride home one evening. I wasn't even in a bar, as I don't go to bars. I was just downtown running some errand and this guy comes up to me and begs me for a ride. I could tell he was really drunk. The entire time he was in my car, I was thinking, "Jesus, this guy is going to murder me..". But I gave him a ride anyway, and he thanked me profusely.

Who knows, maybe I saved some lives by keeping him out from behind the wheel?

Sorta like the people with all the Christian and Jesus shit on their cars...they can be some mean motherfuckers.

You folks might be interested in an experiment done by Philip Zimbardo in 1969, discussed in this article.