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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask what's the loveliest thing someone has done for you?

179 replies

Antsinpants · 21/10/2016 15:31

To end a shitty week with a warm fuzzy thread. Mine is when dd1 was a few weeks old and I was totally knackered, struggling to bf and using formula, my lovely SIL - who had also just had a baby - washed and sterilised all my bottles so I didn't have to. Such a small thing, but it meant everything to me at the time and she's still easily my favourite person in the world. Share the love!

OP posts:
permanentlyexhaustedpigeon · 21/10/2016 15:46

My mum bringing me a heavyweight history book to read after having DD.

After a really awful labour and a week of being talked down to ('first time mum, I see. You've really no idea, have you?'), complained about by other patients ('can't you shut that baby up?') and being surrounded by fluffy marketing ('best for mummy, best for baby!!') it was a lovely reminder that I was still me.

magpiedreams · 21/10/2016 15:53

Soon after I moved to a new area with 2 DC under 2 and knew no one, I was having a dreadful day and my friend surprised me and ordered me my favourite takeaway pizza to be delivered at lunchtime. Made my month!

TheNameIsBarbara · 21/10/2016 15:55

It was a cup of tea made by a stranger.

Something awful had just happened and yet that simple act of buying me a cuppa and just sitting with me was the kindest gesture I've ever encountered. I didn't know the woman, and in the midst of the chaos I forgot to ask her name, but I will always be incredibly grateful to her.

CoffeeCoffeeAndLotsOfIt · 21/10/2016 16:01

Years ago when solo backpacking in NZ, I got sunstroke. Was ill in bed and my dorm mates, who I'd never met, fetched me glasses of water and when I started to feel better cooked for me. They didn't accept money for the food I'd eaten. Such lovely people.

PalcumTowder · 21/10/2016 16:09

I used to work making shop window displays. We were making a really intricate and tricky one that took 14 solid days of sweating in the window, when a man came in with a box of chocolates. He said he walked past that window at 7am every day and saw us working and we should be proud of the result we had achieved. It was only a little thing but I'll never forget the kindness of that stranger!

GinIsIn · 21/10/2016 16:13

We live a mile away from the station. DH finishes work an hour earlier than me so every night he walks home from the station, collects the dog, and walks all the way back so that he and the dog meet me from the train.

ElsaAintAsColdAsMe · 21/10/2016 16:15

Not all that long ago I had to leave everything I owned and ran to a women's refuge miles away.

My children and I had nothing but a few clothes and photos.

Within a day of being there my children had been kitted out with donated clothes and toys, we had a food parcel, and a couple of weeks later on Christmas Eve some lovely people dropped off presents and a local company sent some pizzas and a school sent mince pies. Some lovely local craft people also made Christmas decorations.

We had nothing then, but the generosity of the people who donate to women's aid was overwhelming and I felt like the richest person in the world.

Whitecovers · 21/10/2016 16:23

I was working in a pub whilst pregnant with Dc1. Just before I went on maternity all the old men who sat in one corner of the pub had chipped in and bought me a massive bag of things for the baby including blankets, babygrows, sleepbags, muslins etc and a lovely card.

I was so touched that all these tough old proper Yorkshiremen had done that for me!

GeekyWombat · 21/10/2016 16:30

When my DH and I were first dating we were long distance and most weekends I would come to him. I'd get up at 4am on Monday morning to drive all the way home for work at 9am. Despite him not needing to get up for four hours, whatever the weather he'd insist on getting fully dressed and walking down to the 24 hour garage near his flat to buy me a Costa coffee and a lemon muffin to take with me in the car. Years later seeing Costa's lemon muffins still make me smile (although they don't have poppy seeds anymore which makes me sad!).

The80sweregreat · 21/10/2016 16:37

This is a lovely thread. Elsa, made me cry! Bless you, i hope things are better now.
A lovely lady once changed a tenner for me for the car park machine,in a supermarket. 2 minutes and i would have had a £50 fine, so i was so grateful. ( going inside to get change would have incurred the penalty as it was rammed at the customer desk) she was so helpful. There are so many lovely people around.

ElsaAintAsColdAsMe · 21/10/2016 16:40

So much better now thank you The80s Flowers

snozzlemaid · 21/10/2016 16:42

When I was 19 my car broke down on a very busy dual carriageway at a big city late at night. I hadn't been driving for long and it was in the days before mobile phones. Just after I began walking, to find a phone, a lovely lady and her daughter stopped to ask if they could help. They drove me around until we found a phone and then took me back to my car. They wouldn't accept any money for their trouble. I was so grateful they came along.

The80sweregreat · 21/10/2016 16:43

Elsa, Thats good. , thank you!
Nice to hear somd positive stories!

YvaineStormhold · 21/10/2016 16:46

When I left the school I'd been teaching at, my very challenging Y8 form threw me a surprise party.

They'd got permission to miss an assembly (I didn't know as I was teaching elsewhere in the school).

When I returned to the form room for the final tutor period, they were all there waiting. They'd decorated the room with balloons, bunting and streamers, there was food, a pile of presents, flowers and cards.

They then sat me down on a chair and showed me a PowerPoint presentation they'd made with messages from them and other students around the school that I'd taught.

They'd been planning it for weeks, had a little collection and paid for it all themselves. I was blown away.

I've never cried so much in my life. I had a horrible time at that school and those kids were such hard work at times - to know I'd been appreciated by them made it worthwhile.

It remains the single nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me.

IScreamYouScream · 21/10/2016 16:54

I'm very lucky to have people in my life who do nice things for me all the time. A recent 'stranger' one though - I was muttering at a parking meter (as you do!) as I needed to top it up in the next 60seconds so I wouldn't be fined and I didnt have the change and it didn't take cards as it had previously. A young tracksuit and hoody clad chap overhead and insisted on paying for my parking. Made my day, and was a lovely reminder that you shouldn't judge on appearances 😊

IScreamYouScream · 21/10/2016 16:55

Wow that's lovely Yvaine 😊

Cakescakescakes · 21/10/2016 16:59

Most people (even friends of mine) ignore my autistic son - maybe they feel uncomfortable or don't know how to engage with him etc etc etc. It's heartbreaking. To me he is amazing and wonderful and special but is consistently sidelined. But I have one friend who adores him, always asks about him, buys him things she sees that she thinks he will like, and just generally treats home like an individual person. I really need to tell her actually how much this means to me!

NameChangeDrama · 21/10/2016 16:59

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Cakescakescakes · 21/10/2016 16:59

Treats him

YvaineStormhold · 21/10/2016 17:00

It was. Bless them.

Original poster
Antsinpants · 21/10/2016 17:03

Loving all your tales - my one stand out story like this was the mum who tragically lost her daughter in the 7/7 bombings. After a long day in London (at the inquest I think) she tried to get a taxi to the train station to get home. The taxi driver, who was about to go off duty, insisted on taking her the whole way to her house, wouldn't accept money and said something like "if today can make you remember that there are still good kind people in the world, that's payment enough for me"

OP posts:
PrettyLittleBrownEyedMe · 21/10/2016 17:05

What a lovely thread! I've really enjoyed reading these and hope there will be more.....

Please may I say two things?

My DH and I went out to dinner. Half way through he said 'If we could go back, would you marry me again?' - looking a bit awkward. We'd been married 24 years. I said 'yes of course', looking slightly bemused, and he replied 'Good, because I've got something for you' and it was my engagement ring, in a beautiful box, out of which one of the diamonds had fallen when I was clearing out my parents' house after their deaths. I had hidden it away not being able to bear looking at the empty socket, and he had found it, taken it to a jeweller and had it replaced for me. I cried into the remains of my meal.

The other one only happened last week. I was walking with my darling SIL past some shops and suddenly saw, in a charity shop window, a small framed copy of a picture I had on my wall as a small child, which my mother used to describe to me as part of my bedtime routine. A few days later it arrived in the post for me with nothing but a piece of paper saying 'We love you'.

I am very fortunate. It's thoughtfulness that makes things so wonderful, isn't it?

GeekyWombat · 21/10/2016 17:06

Ok, the last half dozen of these have actually made me tearful. This is such a lovely idea for a thread.

Dontpanicpyke · 21/10/2016 17:09

When ds2 was a baby I looked in the car mirror to see him having a fit. I swerved off the road and grabbed him and his older brother and ran to s nearby house hysterical as he had stopped breathing.

The lovely elderly couple called an ambulance and were calm and gentle. Ds started breathing again and we all went off to hospital.

I had left my car and keys outside and the gentleman drove my car to the hospital and brought my keys up to the ward. He had stopped to get sweets for older ds.

Lovely lovely kind strangers

BathshuaSpooner · 21/10/2016 17:09

It only happens to me at Starbucks. About once a month the person in line ahead of me at drive through will pay for my order. I usually well up when the person at the till tells me my coffee has been paid for. I try to return the favour when I'm able to spare the money.