The Kindness We Come Across

Ever walk along the street and notice someone doing an act of kindness right out of the blue? It doesn’t have to be a big act of heroism, like saving someone’s life from a burning building. It’s those little everyday gestures, a kind smile, a helping hand, that often go unnoticed by the rest of society.

You will never find this person on The Today Show or Oprah. But their charitableness should never go unspoken of or brushed aside. I came across one a few weeks ago.

It involves parking meters.

I was near the hospital, standing in one of the alcoves on another rainy day, waiting for the bank across the street to open that early morning to take out money. Along the street were two guys in rain ponchos wheeling little metal boxes around.

I saw the guy go up to the meter, unlock the front, take out the enclosed canister, and stick it in the round hole where some internal mechanism inside the wheeled metal box released the change inside. Then the guy twisted the canister off and replaced it back into the meter without ever seeing or having access to the chunk change.

An SUV pulled up to the hospital. The woman was well-dressed, with many bags like those ones a person would stow presents inside. It was obvious she was there to visit a patient in the hospital, probably before she headed to work. It was also obvious she was in such a rush that she had forgotten her umbrella at home.

The guy emptying the meters reached her parking space. He emptied the canister, placed it back into the meter, and reached into his pocket to pull out change. He fed his own money into the machine for the woman, letting her know she didn't have to worry about it. Then he crossed the street toward the next meter without waiting for a "Thank You" from the woman.

I wonder how often he does that for people, when he finds a meter ticking to its last seconds and feeds his own money into it? I wonder how many grateful people there are who rush out, especially at the hospital, worried they probably got a ticket or car towed only to find some good, unnamed Samaritan had fed change into their meter?

Does anyone else have a person in mind who deserves such recognition? A person whose charity goes unnoticed?

Editor's note: In case you are wondering about the missing posts from the past few days, again, most of my regular readers know that, for the past two years of this blog, I rarely post about my personal life in such a manner. After looking over what was written, I decided to take them down. Everything I wrote was the truth. I just personally don't feel right to post ongoing negativity on this blog. It's not my style!