Sunday, July 21, 2013
28 Acts of Kindness
1-7: I mailed letters to people who have had an influence on my life that I haven't thanked enough. I got some really lovely responses, which is always a nice perk to telling people how you feel.
8: I left flowers and a card by my neighbors door to wish her a happy birthday, which we coincidentally share.
9: I had my coworkers favorite pizza delivered to the office for lunch when I wasn't there on Wednesday. They were both surprised and appreciative.
10: I started Wednesday by going to an information session and a meeting with a social worker about the possibility of donating my kidney to a stranger. Even though I haven't actually done it, I'm counting taking the first step as a kind act, especially since it meant waking up early and spending my birthday in a hospital being head shrinked. Now I just have to wait to hear from them about starting the next step of physical testing. A little side story...when I first got there, this really sweet nurse took my vitals and when she noticed it was my birthday she sang me a fun birthday song and told
me how nice it was for me to be there. It made me feel really good and reminded me how a little positive comment can go a long way to make somebody else feel good.
11: I treated my friend, Chris who met me in the city for lunch, to ice cream and coffee (not at the same time!). He was kind enough to travel down here from central Jersey and he treated me to lunch so I wanted to repay the favor. I also gave him my mix cd from my car because I had tried to send him one the week before and it apparently disappeared in the mail.
12: Chris and I brought candy to our friend at his work. It was pretty cheesy (not literally), but I'm counting it because I'd be pretty happy if somebody randomly showed up at my job with candy cigarettes.
13: Now I know this one might sound like a long shot but sometimes just keeping your mouth shut is the nicest thing you can do...so when a woman rudely and somewhat frantically asked me to stop charging my completely dead cell phone at the coffee shop because she thought it would give her cancer, I unplugged it without arguing with her.
14: I contributed to sending my coworker an Edible Arrangment for her birthday on Friday.
15: On Saturday I worked for another coworker so she could go to Washington D.C.
16: I signed up at kiva.org to provide a small loan to a woman in an impoverished country to fund her fruit business. Kiva is a great organization, I highly recommended checking it out.
17: I stopped by a veterinary office and bought a couple toys to donate to a program they have there where they send care packages to dogs at war.
18:I left wine and a note for a woman who has been very kind to my family, particularly my nephew.
19: I bought the wine for dinner with my friends that night. In all honesty I wound up being one of two of us that drank it, but it was the intent that counted.
The rest of the events of Saturday were a collaboration with my amazing friends...
20: Claire and I stopped at Panera, where she bought a gift card and I got a cookie and we asked the girl behind the counter to give them to the next people who came in. We had done this on Claire's birthday, too, at which time it was really exciting and appreciated. This girl seemed more confused and annoyed that we just made her day a little more difficult. But we tried!
21: On our way into Philly for dinner we gave the woman in the toll booth flowers, which put a big smile on her face, and we paid the toll for the car behind us.
22: We ate dinner at this delicious (and incredibly hot) restaurant called Pizza Brain. The staff was really friendly so we left them a large tip (even though they didn't actually serve us), and the man behind the counter chased us out the door, saying through a megaphone how awesome we are. This is what we put in the tip jar...
And these are girls trying to cool down...
23: We taped packets of change to the meters in Old City.
24: We gave flowers to strangers all over the city, which may have been my favorite part, and it made for some good stories.
- A woman in the pizza shop couldn't believe we were giving her flowers and said it made her day. She had the biggest smile!
- Dona gave flowers to a woman who was standing by her car. She looked pretty confused, but she told Dona she just found that somebody had backed into her car and drove off so I think it was good timing.
- A surprising amount of people declined the flowers, which I guess is understandable. Sometimes it's hard to accept kindness, especially with the world the way it is. Before this experience I'd probably react the same way. Here's a picture of Amanda attempting to give flowers to a couple that wouldn't take them.
- We gave them to a couple little girls we passed in our travels. They seemed the most excited by them and their parents seemed pretty appreciative.
- Heather gave some to a sad girl who was eating alone outside. She seemed confused and not really entertained but it was a nice gesture on Heather's part.
- Dona gave some to a guy passing on a trolley. A bunch of men on the trolley were telling her to give them to their friend instead so Amanda ran flowers that had broken up to him, but he got offended that they were broken and literally threw them at her. She responded by giving him the finger. We got a good laugh out of it, and wasn't making people smile the whole point?
- I gave flowers to one of the female workers at the Franklin Fountain and she was so happy. She said it made her day and my brother said after I walked out she was showing them off and telling everybody not to touch her flowers.
25: Our last good deed as a group before heading home was to give these amazing bags provided by Heather and Claire to homeless people.
Dave came in pretty clutch by taking us to an area where they were setting up for bed and as a bonus there was a fountain there for us to play in.
We had 9 bags left (Dave had given one to a man in Old City who responded with a bunch of "I love you"'s!) and we happened to come across 9 homeless people who were very appreciative. I was really taken back by their sense of community, as I saw one woman go out of her way to make sure another had gotten a bag for herself.
26: Today I took my dog to PetSmart to get him a toy and a new scratch pad for the cats. Here is Papi Chulo with his new monkey.
And Chooch taking advantage of his gift...
27: My little brother loves the minions from Despicable Me so I got a kids meal from McDonalds so I could get him a minion toy. This is me and Eric in the fountain last night.
28: To end my weekend, I spent some time playing with Chooch. I know this is something that I should do regularly but most people know that Chooch is a pretty badly behaved cat that I spend a lot of time yelling at, so I thought I'd give him some positive attention for a change. He purred his crazy loud purr the whole time so it was worth it. And I shared my kids meal with Papi Chulo!
This project was pretty amazing and more than anything it reminded me that I'm surrounded by incredible people that demonstrate great kindness to me on a daily basis. I thought mostly everybody would think this idea was lame, but not only did they accept it, they completely embraced it and enthusiastically participated. It wound up being so much more than I had even hoped. Thank you in particular to Claire and Heather who went over and above, helping me plan for weeks, and putting in a ton of time and money to make this so special.
Also thank you to everybody who did something kind this week with this in mind. It means so much that you participated in this on your own. You're all pretty amazing!
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