Tuesday, January 1, 2013

A Random Act of Kindness

by Pa Rock
Grateful Recipient

This is the first day of 2013, a year that some might tend to pre-judge as potentially problematic because it contains the dreaded "13," an historic portend of evil happenings.  But I have had a sign, however, that this is going to be a wonderful year - full of hope, and promise, and good deeds.

This afternoon I drove into Goodyear to go to the movies.  My objective, which I met, was to see the film version of Les Miserables (more on that in a subsequent post).  After I parked and walked toward the theatre, I encountered a small line of patrons waiting to buy tickets.   A woman was approaching the line from another direction and wound up stepping in front of me.    Technically, I was there first, but I was in no hurry and honestly did not care about my placement in the ticket line.

But the woman's husband did.  He stepped up to his wife, looked at me, and said "Are you really going to butt in line in front of this guy?"  She turned to face me,  and we exchanged a couple of humorous remarks.   There was no problem, but the husband stepped out of line and seemed to be truly bothered.

When we were almost at the box-office, the woman turned to me and began chatting.  "What movie are you going to see?"  she asked.  "Les Mis," I replied.  She said that was what she really wanted to see, but was going to another movie instead - apparently one that appealed more to her husband.  Minutes later after completing her ticket purchase, the lady turned around and handed me a ticket to Les Miserables stating that it was her "random act of kindness" for the day.

I was flabbergasted.  I tried to buy her a random bag of popcorn, but her husband was already at the concession counter taking care of that.  Now I will be on the lookout for a random act of kindness to pass along to someone else - knowing that it will make me a better person and 2013 a much more pleasant year.

Thank you, my anonymous friend, for getting the year off to such a nice start!

1 comment:

Xobekim said...

There are times when I really don't want to "comment" but would like to give the writing, the concept, or the perspective a thumbs up or down. Unfortunately Blogger doesn't offer that feature.

So, having nothing worthy to say, let me offer my thumbs up.