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My Jaw Is Still on the Floor (In a Good Way)


water.JPGIt’s one thing to see random acts of kindness on TV or in a movie. It’s quite another to personally experience one in real life.

Times are tough right now, everywhere. The headlines are riddled with bad news about our economic situation. Gone are the days of a freelance designer (my wife!) having work come in on a regular basis. But just about when it looked like there was no light at the end of the strapped-for-cash tunnel, I witnessed a random act of kindness cracking the darkness and flooding through in a bright white stream.

You see, we’d gotten a bit behind on our water bill. (Yeah, water in Colorado can be a costly commodity.) We received a letter from the utility company and expected to read the dreaded “friendly reminder” that we’re a bit dry in the accounts-payable department. Instead, to our great surprise, was a short couple of sentences explaining to us that a family in our very own neighborhood had secretly paid our outstanding balance in full.

Jaw hits floor.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve gotten help from loving family members in the past, and for those generous acts of kindness we’re truly grateful. But those weren’t random. This, this was a new one for me. And like I said, you see this kind of scripted stuff on TV shows and in movies all the time, for drama’s sake. But not so often in real life. Your real life.

You can’t buy a gift that’s been given. You can’t make up for it. All you can do is say THANK YOU. And who knows, maybe if we all paid attention to the movies we watch a little more and tried to emulate the good stuff they sometimes show us, we’d all experience this kind of thing more often.