What's the kindest thing a stranger has done for you?

Goodness I think the best I can do is someone giving me a not used up yet parking ticket

This is going to massively out me so I'll keep the details brief. In a London park when my brother was four, my mother thought I had my eye on him (I was ten) and I thought I'd sent him after her. He got lost. A woman found him and brought him to the lost children's tent just as my mum came running up to it. I think she was so unbelievably relieved, she didn't even manage to thank her properly.

It took 16 years for mum and I to be able to have a discussion about it and neither of us will move an inch if we see a child that appears to be alone until we identify the responsible adult.

That lady will never know how grateful I am to her.

Not my own story but DH...last winter when the snow came, he spent two hours gritting the whole street and individual paths.

There's a lot of elderly residents and he said he'd feel awful if one of them took a tumble when he was able to help a little. Aww!

I think this should be in classics, how do I nominate it please?

Kindest thing probably that a land lord took us on when DH was out of work, we were completely on our uppers and a lot of land lords wouldn't even look at us. He knew DH had interviews lined up and would be in work as soon as he could be, still I guess it could have been considered a gamble. I was very pg at the time. We moved in and things started to get back to some sort of normality. It turned out he was a good LL too, stuff was always fixed on time etc.

We went to buy some guinea pigs at a fur and feather auction.The ones the dds wanted were a group of 4,and although we only really wanted 2,we had space for 4,so I bid for them.A lady was bidding against me and when I reached my limit I shook my head and dropped out.,DD1 promptly burst into tears and the auctioneer said something about the poor little girl being upset and the lady who had won them asked if we'd like to go halves with her.It was so kind of her and she let the girls pick the two they liked best and she kept the other two.What a kind person.

I love reading these.
I have two.

I bought a Bumbo off ebay. I messaged say no rush to post as DD was only 3 months. Inside the Bumbo when it arrived was 5 gorgeous girls dresses from Next age 3-6m. Seller thought we might make use of them. We were skint and very grateful.

Other was this summer, stranded in pouring rain in Stratford Upon Avon at 9pm with crying 3yo, car had flat battery. A kind couple all dressed up for the theatre offered us a jumpstart.

Last week I left my purse in the bank and went off shopping. Panicked when I realised I had lost it and DD2 told me I had left it in the bank (she remembered me putting it down). I raced back to the bank and the 'welcomer' lady at the front said 'we've got your purse'. Apparently they had run out onto the street to find me, then one lady found my driving licence card in the purse, looked up my records (I bank in another branch) and left a message on my mobile which hadn't yet come through to me. I was so grateful and relieved keep meaning to go back with box of chocolates.

Years ago when I was a young lass in my 20s I remember waiting for a district line train at South Ken station. There was a man who was behaving rather oddly, walking up and down the platform. Then he fixated on a girl, who looked a bit younger than me (around 18) and he stared at her and kept walking past her one way and then the next, staring at her menacingly. I felt anxious for her. So I went up to her and said 'Hi, how are you? Haven't see you for ages'. She clicked what I was doing and we started chatting. The guy walked off but I waited till her train came and made sure she got on and he was nowhere in sight. I guess it was a case of 'do to others what you would like done to yourself'.

In doctors waiting room yesterday dr was running 45 mins late. DD1 (3) running in and out of playhouse in waiting room shouting 'are you ALL RIGHT mummy? Is your tummy HURTING??' while 8 month old DS1 doing his cute sit on floor, happily sucking toys and merrily being sick everywhere routine. DD1 needed a wee very suddenly and a lovely lady saw my dilemma and said 'don't worry, I'll keep an eye on him!' and sat and played with him while I took DD1 to loo. Such a little thing really but was really stressed with dr appt as it was and when we chatted afterwards turned out her grandson had same name as my son (Ridley) - all of which just put me in a better frame of mind for an appointment I was dreading.

The last one is he found someone had left their car keys in the car lock in a car park in town, so he stood there for an hour until they came back.

*open. He called in and she appeared, hands bleeding and in a state. He called the police and ambulance and covered her hands until they arrived. He only told me this weeks later.

I aspire to be as good a person as my DH is.

Just a few examples of his kindness:

1. he works in a convenience shop, and he gets to know his customers. The store had changed some of it's range and DH noticed an old lady looking confused. She said she came to the store as she didn't like making the journey to town, but that DH's store had stopped stocking the cat litter and food she normally bought so she had no choice, as the alternatives were more expensive. DH ordered in one of each just for her every week, even though his area manager gave him stick for it.

2. a lady came into DH's store at 10am and bought 3 bottles of vodka. He watched her leave after being served by another member of staff who knew of her. The lady rang the store an hour later, slurring and aggressive because she said one of the bottles wouldn't open. DH said he felt v uneasy, and one of the staff members said she lived round the corner, so DH went there with the store's security guard and found her front door o

The Mumsnet Internet strangers today who posted and PM'd all kinds of brilliant advice and offers of help to me. I had spent my last penny on rent and had no food in the house and no incoming money for the next 6 days.
Despite all the 'bloody mumsnet has turned horrible and nasty' threads I actually think it's still a wonderful, supportive place filled with kind people.

In real life, the lovely man who tried to stop a complete Tosspot from harassing me and an elderly lady at the bus stop the other day.

I once bought a pouch of tobacco for a homeless man I saw picking up doff ends from the dirty floor and smoking them. I don't think that really counts as a 'kind thing' but it made him happy.

When my son fractured his elbow all of the nursing staff in A&E and on the ward went above and beyond to help him. One nurse walked way out of her way trying to find us, to make sure that my son had some pain relief while he was x-rayed. I wrote to the head of nursing, describing each nurse whose names I didn't know and telling her the lovely things that they had each done. She wrote back to thank me, saying that at a time when nurse bashing was rife, it was lovely to get a positive letter. I'm so glad I wrote it.

Bohemian your story touches me. My son had a nervous breakdown at uni. I'd like to think someone was kind to him. He's ok now.

Nicest thing done for me was when I was suffering from a nervous breakdown and depression at University and on the train home. We were already delayed for two hours and I was getting more and more upset. A very kind academic-type man gets on at New St, sits opposite me and just talks to me for the whole five hour journey, sharing book recommendations, chatting about literature, sharing a bag of jelly babies and just generally making me feel better.

In what I have done for others, two things spring to mind simply because they were great fun to do. One is went my Nana died in the late November a few years ago, I found her Christmas supermarket savings card with £200 on it. I spent the lot the week after her funeral and donated the whole shop to the Christmas Boxes to the Elderly charity. It was fun!
Also, after seeing the Big Issue guy stood out in the icy rain in December last year, I went into the shop and bought him a golf umbrella, scarf, hat and gloves. He cried and I totally forgot to buy a Big Issue.

l was in Sardinia on holiday and my DD (18months) developed a urine infection. l don't speak Italian and my French is minimal. In the remote part of Sardinia we were staying they don't speak English. I was very emotional as she was in so much pain and a lovely man stood behind me and translated everything l was saying to the pharmacist and then translated back to me. l got all the antibiotics l needed and the holiday was saved. He has so discrete and without him she would have needed to go to the hospital.

She was so thankful which I brushed off as I've been there and she asked how old my DCs were as only someone who has been in that situation would help.

I don't agree, I have no kids, but I will always be first to help in any way I can, from carrying a child to helping with a buggy, whatever helps.
Love this thread.

Once in France we docked late on a Sunday and ran out of petrol.Being a Sunday there were no manned petrol stations so we had to use a card except ours wouldn't work and we were in the middle of nowhere with 3 babies under 18 months.

The lady behind us offered to pay on her credit card and we give her the cash which we did.We could easily have driven off.

Have to say we've had a fair few kind stranger incidents in France.

one of the kindest things someone did for me and my family was to make sure we got back to our camp site safe. we had through communication failure managed to get stranded in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in France. a man had picked his wife up and seen us stranded he took us over to where some buses where waiting and convinced or rather from what we could guess shamed one of them to take us to our camp site. we were very grateful he just shrugged off our thanks.

i always try to pay things forward giving parking tickets money to the homeless and i once in bad weather took and old lady home she seemed to be very frail and i felt in good conscience i couldn't just carry on my way and leave her there.

I agree if everyone did something for someone else the world would be a much better place.

I had just moved to Madrid in 1996 and was trying to find a flat for my then boyfriend and I. It was, at the time, a very strict Catholic country and very difficult to find a flat for an unmarried couple. My Spanish was pants which didn't help. I was on the phone in a bar, as it was the days before mobiles. I phoned yet another flat owner in broken Spanish. It did not go well. I burst in to tears. The entire bar staff and a number of the customers all stopped and asked me if I was OK, and I think gave me a free drink. I went back there for breakfast a few times and they always asked me if I was doing OK. I was and my Spanish had improved enough to let them know how grateful I was for their kindness.

One boyfriend I had had a ferrari, he asked me if I could take it to get some petrol, as I came over battersea bridge my foot slipped and the car stalled. I knew if I pumped too hard I would flood the engine so I put on the hazards and waved my arms for people to pass but the guy behind me kept blowing his horn at me telling me to get a f..... move on, not sure if he was jealous, or if it was because i was a woman driving a sports car. suddenly the noise stopped. there was knock on the window I wound it down and there was a young man smiling, he handed me a bunch of keys and said, don't worry about him anymore, just go and throw them out of the window. i did just that and smiled all the way home. I wonder how many people behind him told him to get a f..... move on.

Nicest thing was when a stranger held me in a Morrisons as I had a full on wobbley 4 days after I had found my mam dead in her home. I was just stood there in a total pit of despair and that lady was amazing. She even wiped the snot off my face with her glove and made me smile. I never saw her again but often think of her around xmas/new year.

My act of kindness was doing some shopping for a lady down the street when we had all the bad snow. Her own son never bothered his arse and she is 94! She is lovely and still stops to chat on passing.

I'm pregnant, this is my 9th pregnancy and I have 2 dd's (try were 18 months and 2.5 years) I was told in early pregnancy to avoid lifting the girls and take things very easy.

For some crazy reason I decided taking them swimming would be a good idea. Dd1 cried getting out of the swimming pool and tantrumed in the changing rooms while getting dd2 dressed. Dd2 then tantrumed when we were trying to leave. By this point I'd been kicked, punched and generally beaten up by the girls and I had also carried them both lots just trying to get in the car.

In the foyer of the leisure centre I just sat down and was so close to tears worried about the baby and unable to control my 2 dd's who had thrown themselves on the floor and were screaming and foot stamping. A lovely lady came over sat with us talked to dd1 till she calmed down them stayed with dd2 while I put dd1 in the car. She was an angel and I haven't been back since!