Random Acts of Kindness

It was a cool mid-December morning, and I’d just finished my final final of the semester (one of those cruel 7 a.m. finals). What a relief. A couple other roommates had returned from their 7 a.m. finals, and we found ourselves with five of our six roommates all in the apartment together with no place else to be for a couple more hours. This was rare, so we took advantage of it. Someone suggested we go to breakfast at the Denny’s restaurant behind our apartment complex.

Thus, we were seated at one of those semicircle tables, laughing and boisterous. The topics of our conversation have long faded from memory, but we were happy, relieved at the end of the semester and excited to be heading various directions to home for Christmas. The waitress had just just taken our order and left. At a table nearby, a woman and – we assumed – her teenage daughter had just finished and were leaving. They came to our table, laid down some money, said, “Breakfast is on us. Merry Christmas,” and left with a smile.

We were silent at the surprise. A couple of us finally turned and yelled, “Thank you!” before they made it out the door. We watched them through the window as they got in their car and drove away.

“That was so nice.”
“I can’t believe how nice that was.”
“That was so cool.”
“I want to do that someday.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m totally going to do that someday.”

With a nice amount of money on our table, we called back the waitress to change our orders a bit, getting a large orange juice instead of a small, or adding a side of hash browns. After we paid our bill, there was plenty of money for a very nice tip, so we left that behind.

It was a small, random act of kindness that still sticks with me today, over a decade later. It made us so happy, and inspired us to be better and to pass on that kindness. So on this Thanksgiving week in the U.S., I am grateful to those two; they are two of many who have inspired me to be a better person.