It's November and my co-worker and I were talking about how the obvious thing for anyone to do on a blog in the month of November is a month of posts on things they are thankful for. While I'm sure I'll gravitate to a little of that this month, I wanted to share a story of kindness from long ago that has stuck with me.
When I was in college, I spent a semester in London. For the first month of the semester, we stayed at a bed and breakfast in the middle of London until we learned our way around. After that, we were placed with our homestay families.
We didn't get lucky like most of our classmates to have a family that lived along the Tube line. I knew how to navigate the Tube. Buses and trains, that was a whole 'nother ballgame, and getting to my new home required taking a train. (Public transportation is practically nonexistent in Louisiana.)
The first time I had to navigate the train, I was FREAKING OUT! It took me over 30 minutes to find the train that was going in the right direction. The thing I didn't know about trains? That some of them are express trains, and some of them don't stop at every station on the way to the final destination.
I was mortified when the train whizzed past my stop. It took a minute to register what was happening. I was on an express train out of London. I knew my pass was only good through Zone 3, and my stop was on the border of Zones 3 and 4.
When I heard them coming by to check tickets, I began to cry. I didn't have enough money to pay for a pass to cover the rest of the trip AND to come back. I know the other passengers in the car were probably wondering what was wrong with the crazy American bawling her eyes out on the train, but the man coming around to check tickets sat down next to me and asked what was wrong.
I explained to him that I had just moved in with the family, and didn't fully understand how the trains worked. I then had to embarrass myself more by telling him that I didn't have enough money to cover the remainder of the fare and the fare back...and that I actually didn't have enough money to cover both.
I'm not sure what reaction I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting him to tell me not to worry, explain to me how to read the train maps and tell me that I needed to make sure the train was calling my station before getting on, and then he gave me money to cover my return fare. It was, and still is, one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for me.
When I was in London, I was going through a point in my life where I didn't trust people. I was struggling with some personal issues and trying to build up the strength to leave some personal demons in the past that had followed me to London. This stranger's act of kindness made a huge impact on me.
I share this story to remind all of us as we go through this season of gratitude leading into the holiday season that there are people all around us that need a little kindness. It may not seem like a huge deal for us to stop and explain something as simple as a train map, but to them it could mean everything. Let's not make being kind to strangers just a holiday thing, let's start now and keep it going.
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