Kindness Ripples

When you perform a random act of kindness, it can begin to ripple.

Someone bought a gift card at the book store today and said I should give it to the first child who came in the store this afternoon.  It took a long time, but eventually a woman came in with her two children, a girl who might have been 12-14 and her younger brother.  The kids went right for the children's room while the mother browsed.  Eventually the girl was all alone in one of the stacks and I went to her and gave her the card.  I told her that someone who wanted to honor the children who were killed in Connecticut wanted me to give the card to a child who came in the store.  Her eyes got wide and she looked thoughtful and just said "Wow."

Later, when the mother was getting ready to round up her kids and leave, I mentioned the gift card to her and it brought her to tears.  She had not heard of the 26 Acts of Kindness project.  

Before they left the store, the boy asked if I had any books on cars. I directed him to the very small section we had on cars and he chose two coffee-table type books with beautiful photos of cars.  The bill for the two books was $19.41 and his sister asked if she could buy his books with her gift card.

So one gift of kindness resulted in another gift of kindness in a matter of minutes.  It's enough to make your heart grow three sizes in one day.

Later I watched Rock Center with Brian Williams, who had Ann Curry on to report on the amazing response her suggestion has generated, now from all over the world.  She was amazed to hear that she had even received a communique from Afghanistan.

I think everyone is so happy to feel they are doing something positive in response to the murder of those children that the thing has snowballed into a real avalanche.

This is a pretty dumb picture.  It's our car sitting in our driveway.  It was going to be a series of photos of all the pretty lights on all the houses in Davis, following the map in the newspaper to direct us to how to find them.

Walt picked me up after work and we came home to watch Jeopardy and then got ready to take the light tour after the show was over, and then come home for dinner.

I got my camera ready and we got in the car and it wouldn't start.   There was nothing.  The lights work.  The air conditioner works (not that we need it, since it was in the mid 40s at the time), the radio works, but the motor won't turn over.  We had just DRIVEN it home from downtown.  Walt tried and tried and we finally had to admit there was nothing he could do.

It was too late to call AAA...and we were home, after all, so we will have to do that in the morning.

He had already arranged to rent a car for us to drive to my mother's for an early Christmas and to Santa Barbara for the real Christmas and he tried to change the pick-up date for earlier so we will have a car for the next couple of days, but found out they have no cars available to rent tomorrow.

Maybe we'll be lucky and it will be something simple enough that AAA can fix it while it's in the carport.  Otherwise we'll have to be towed somewhere and maybe it will be simple enough then that it can be fixed while Walt waits.

If not, I don't know what we're going to do.

If there is a light at the end of the tunnel it's that I finished everything I needed to do before Christmas this morning, so just sitting here and playing with the iPad won't be such a bad deal.

But it means that the crab eggs Benedict that had my name on it for brunch tomorrow won't get eaten by me.  Sigh.  I hope crab season lasts until after Christmas!

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Oh...in case the world ends tomorrow and I don't get to update this journal, it's been a fun 12 years.  Thanks for being such faithful readers!