philanthropy--write something unexpected that someone did for you!

[KCDem]

LPFF wrote about getting her star, and it reminded me of something special that happened to me once.

I was travelling from Urbana, IL to DC (National airport) to give a paper at an academic conference 7 years ago. We had a stopover in Atlanta, but the weather there was bad and we couldn't land on time. So, we didn't arrive in DC until after midnight. I was planning on taking the metro into town--as a poor grad student, I really didn't want to blow $50 on cabfare. The guy sitting next to me on the flight was a DC native, and I was asking him all sorts of questions: "when does the metro close?", etc. Well, when I was grabbing my luggage, my flight neighbor came up to me with his partner, introduced us, and said that they could drive me into town. They weren't going exactly that way, but they offered me a ride. I asked them if I could give them $. Their response: "no, just do something nice for someone else some day."

I was overwhelmed by their generosity. Have I paid them back?--I don't know. I've been pretty selfish lately.

[Nikia]

1. My friend took me to work

This winter I had bad tires. My husband had gone away on a business trip. I got up and got ready and noticed how much snow there was. I knew that there was no way that I would be able to even make it out of the drive way. Work is only two miles away so I was going to walk in the cold blowing snow but I'd be late. It was only fiftenn minutes before I had to be at work. Just as I was about to leave, my friend rings the door bell and said that he thought of me and how hard it would be for me to get to work with my tires. As a result, I got to work safely and on time.

[rbnyc]

2. My friend came over on Monday...

...and made me lunch and cleaned my whole kitchen. (Because I'm walking with crutches and it's hard for me to do stuff right now.)