Strangers you remember fondly

When DS was about 5 he had been scared of heights but then suddenly got the courage to climb to the top of the climbing frame. So proud of himself then shouted Mummy I need you to climb up here and get me down (about 7 foot up).

Thankfully a man about 7 foot tall appeared just when I needed one and said shall I get him down and said yes please and he just reached up his arms and took DS and gave him to me.

Quilliam I was brought up to stop when a funeral procession went past, it's a sign of respect for those who've passed over. Men should remove their hats, too.

What a fabulous thread!

I was walking down some busy London street, I don't recall which one, when I suddenly felt very faint, and dropped down on a bench, trying to keep it together.

A security guard from a nearby store instantly appeared from nowhere with a glass of iced water on a silver tray. He'd spotted me from the window and thought I could do with a bit of help.

What a thoughtful, kind thing to do for a complete stranger, just passing by.

Also a homeless lady I met and spent some time chatting to. She was ex army, had left due to being shot in the knee and the spine, ended up loosing her home and children. I kept looking out for her, I saw her a month later at a bus stop to get to london where she'd been offered help by a military charity. She was in full uniform and looked so proud and happy. I gave her a massive hug and wished her well, offered to buy her lunch to eat on the way which she wouldn't accept. I think about her often.

So many...

The man who asked if I was OK after a particularly hasty street harassment. It was such a fleeting thing for him but he restored my faith that not all men are like that. I hope he lives a happy life.

The Tanzanian man who looked after us on a bus on its way to Kenya. Showed us the loos and kept us safe.

The lovely, lovely Tube drivers who gave me a lift home when I was stranded in London. Right to my door and so safe.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

The poor sod who's car I rear ended. It was the first time I'd driven on my own and I badly misjudged. We both got out and I burst in to tears. He calmed me down, gave me a cigarette, sorted out as much with the insurance people for me as he could and then waited with me while someone came to collect me. Spent half an hour reasurimg me it was ok, worse had happned to him and that I mustn't stop driving. He was so lovely. I think it made me feel even worse.

The policeman who talked to me - complete nonsense inc silly jokes - while I was removed from my car after a serious accident. I was terrified and he had a really soothing demeanour which was just what I needed that day, but which wasn't "there there" he sort of jollied me along, saying daft things.

The "city gent" in a very expensive suit who helped me with dd's buggy onto a train in London. He ripped his jacket helping me and brushed it off 'not at all, it's only a jacket, happy to have been of use' in a very RP accent. Summeriscum - maybe it was the same gent and this is just a thing he does?

@mnhq definitely worthy of classics

It’s a trivial one but I once ran out of petrol in the middle of a traffic light controlled junction in the rush hour.

There was a petrol station about 300 yards away .

Seemingly from nowhere a group of about 5 Eastern European workmen appeared and pushed my car into the petrol station.

They then just slipped away into the ether !

This thread is one of the best things I've read on mumsnet in years. @mnhq, please put it in classics.

Several years ago I was leaving work early due to snow. I couldn't get the car onto the main road, the traffic one way O the main road was at a stand still. The other was doing ok.

Two men jumped out and stopped the traffic. The shoved me out and on my way. I couldn't stop to thank them.

The older lady who came up to me while I was waiting on my mum picking me up after chemo. I was 21, she said “I know you’re right in the middle of this right now, but there is another side and you’ll get there. I just feel I need to tell you this.”

I’ve never forgotten her, I say the same words to other people now. It was exactly what I needed to hear, she was right.

I've just remembered another one. I was walking through the park towards the hospital, when a Rastafarian cycled past me. Something made me stop and turn around to look at him. When I did, he was staring at me with a massive smile on his face. He said, "Hello mother. You going to have two boys. They're going to be big and strong and they're going to be fine.' Then he cycled off. I was in my fifth round of IVF at the time, stomach flat as a pancake. But he was right. And when DS2 was dangerously ill for the first few years of his life I used to remember that man's smile and him saying they were going to be big, strong and fine.

I was out for the day with my mum in her wheelchair when suddenly the tire just popped off one of the back wheels. We were stumped. We were on a narrow bit of pavement in a busy seaside town and I couldn't move the chair. I couldn't move mum because there was nowhere for her to sit and it would be ages before my dad joined us.

Then a group of two men and a woman crossed the road and asked if they could help. The lady helped me get mum to her feet and helped me keep her upright while the two men turned the chair over and put the tyre back on.

It wasn't an easy job and required a tool that one of them happened to have on a chain on his belt. It transpired that they were holiday makers who all worked together in a prison workshop where the primary job was refurbishing wheelchairs!

The loveliest and at the same time sad thing about this thread is that the people who have touched the lives of others and in some cases made a massive difference will have no idea.

I wonder if somewhere there is someone who remembers me fondly for some small kindness I’ve shown them? I’d like to think so.

This is a lovely thread

Ds2 and I had not been long out of hospital and out of danger , ds1 had been through hell poor thing not knowing what was going on, so I was determined we all went to a fete that we went to every year. I had nasty PND and my marriage was slowly disintegrating so to say I was feeling low was an understatement

Anyway Exdh says he is going to the loo and as was his per he took forever and I was stood waiting with ds2 in the buggy and ds1 holding my hand (he was 3) and all of a sudden ,has never done it before.. took off hell for leather...so I run as fast as I can not tipping the buggy and the little bugger ran past the queue and into the ladies loos

In desperation I yelled "please stop him" because I knew I couldn't get the buggy in there

All the women just looked at me blankly and stood past to let him go (not their fault they shouldn't have to parent someone else's kid)

I could see him but not get to him and was faced with leaving ds2 alone in his buggy in a place I would be be able to see him or leave ds1 who had started to panic surrounded by strangers

All if a sudden this lovely woman who hasn't been in the queue grabbed the buggy handle and said "go go , I've got the pram and I'll keep it where you can turn around and see him I promise"

I tried to dash into the loos to grab ds1 but the women at the end had apparently ignored the whole debacle and for some reason thought I was cutting in so refused to let me pass...i started pushing through but one pushed me back

By now ds1 was screaming as he was out of his depth and panicked ,I started crying in panic and frustration (nasty pnd)

Thus woman...with one hand still on ds2 buggy in the poshest voice in the world roundly berated these women...i can't remember precisely what she said but it was a long the lines of "shame on you get out of her way before I make you"

Finally the women moved I got ds1

Came back to the buggy checked ds2 was ok and promptly dissolved again and sobbed "I'm so sorry" to her and the DC

I was managing to say thank you over and over

She gave me a hard hug and said " I know that look...youre doing a great job and so was I when I felt like that...please make sure you talk to someone"

I could only nod and off she strode with a final disgusted glare at the other women

It sounds so so silly that I panicked but we had honestly been through months of he'll and Ds2 and I were really close to not making it and leaving ds1...that the incident had pushed me over the edge and this kind stranger stepped in and held us up

Just noticed how many of these random acts of kindness occurred on or around trains/stations !!

Over 20 years ago when I was 19yo I was walking down a street in York wearing a new dress on a sunny day and feeling very foxy. Some good looking guy crossed the street told me I looked amazing and asked me out. Sadly I had to decline as I had a boyfriend but only time it’s ever happened and was a confident boost I guess.

When I was 13yo I caught a bus to Lyon from London on my own. There was a very lovely Chinese lady in the seat behind me who chatted to me and gave me sweets.

Years ago I was on a train on my way to sit a uni exam. Was studying and feeling convinced I'd fail it. A man next to me noticed how stressed I was and asked what was the matter.

I told him all about the exam, what subject it was, how I thought I'd fail etc. He took the time to reassure me, said I'd be fine, would pass.

Leaving the train, he said in passing that he was speaking as someone whose profession was in the very subject of the exam I was about to sit.

I did pass the exam and still remember his kindness in taking the time to calm a distressed student!

@MNHQ surely this needs to go in Classics.

I had broken up with my first love and was on a long train somewhere, not even sure where, but it very recent and I was just sobbing, sobbing.

A lovely lady just came and sat with me and just held my shoulders, and listened, and just told me I would be ok for what felt like the whole journey, maybe it was.

The man at Liverpool Lime St behind me in the atm queue who followed me out the station to push a tenner into my hand and then ran off to prevent me trying to give it back, or at least get his details to repay him.
I was there for a full day course for work, miles from home and he'd just witnessed me struggling to get a tenner for my lunch etc only to realise l only had £9.98 in my acct and had asked me what was wrong with the machine to which l'd explained it wasn't the machine my acct was a few pence short.
I was having an awful time at home at the time at hands of exh.and this lovely man had obviously noticed l was close to tears as l walked away from atm thinking l wouldn't have a drink or anything to eat all day.

I was suffering from severe (but as yet not diagnosed or treated) PND. The children were 7, 3 and 4 weeks. Before the baby was born we had booked to go on a trip with two other families, taking the children on a train ride, a trip to the theatre and lunch out then home on the train. We were a group of 5 adults and 5 children.

DH was really supportive and asked me what I felt able to cope with - I said the two older ones - and he said that he would take charge of everything else. So we got there, got to the theatre, the children all loved the show, I nursed the baby through most of it and it was all looking good. Then he dressed the baby in her coat and hat, sorted out the pushchair and I made sure the older two were dressed and we all went out for lunch.

As we were leaving the restaurant a lady commented on the baby and said what a beautiful bonnett she was wearing. I looked down and DH had put her hat on backwards and I burst into tears! I was such a rubbish mum my daughter wasn't even dressed properly!

I spent the rest of the day swallowing hard and fighting back the tears. I told my friends I had a sore throat and a cold and that was why I was sniffling.

We got to the station and it was heaving. When the train arrived it was a case of "every man for himself."

DH told me to get on with the kids. He would get on a different carriage if necessary with the pushchair and the bag.

So I got on - two tired children and a hungry baby. I sat on the floor because the baby had to be fed and I had the older two children on my knees. There were people standing everywhere, I was terrified someone would step or fall onto us and two men sitting in seats where I was on the floor were telling to keep the children's feet off their bags.

We can't have been like that for every long and somehow the ticket collector/guard whatever found us and told us to come with him. It was one of those double ended trains with a driver's compartment at each end. He somehow shepherded us the length of the train to the compartment at the end and unlocked it and sat us there so the two older ones shared the "driver's seat" and I had the other seat.

He said that he was disgusted at the behaviour of the men who had been complaining and that other people had told him what had happened but the train was so full they couldn't get to me to offer me their seat. He said that he hoped that if his wife was ever in my position that someone would help her.

I asked him for his name because I wanted to write to the train company to express my thanks but he said I couldn't because he had broken every rule in the book by putting me in the compartment!

My son is nearly 30 now and he still remembers that nightmare day as one of the most exciting in his childhood.

When DS1 was two weeks old I was readmitted to hospital with sepsis. I had to go back to the maternity ward and the midwife in charge was horrible. I couldn't continue breastfeeding in the state I was in and (among other things) she wouldn't let DH take any of the ready made bottles home for DS1 (I was too ill to care for him overnight and they wouldn't let DH stay and help me, so DS1 had to go home). It was a Sunday night and we were panicked about where DH could get formula from. A lovely, lovely HCA brought us enough bottles to get DH and DS1 through the night. She wrapped them in a hoodie in the bottom of the buggy but I know she would have got into so much trouble if anyone had found out she'd given us the bottles. She was so kind and it meant so much at such a shitty time.

Another time, we were travelling home from Turkey via Germany with 2yo DS1. It was a night flight with Lufthansa from Munich and they announced they wouldn't be doing priority boarding for families with children - the flight was mostly businessmen. One very smartly dressed businessman announced that that was ridiculous and demanded that we be allowed to board first with DS1. He also carried the buggy for me and helped with the hand luggage. We were so grateful, we'd had such a long day with DS1 and were all exhausted. Lovely man also helped us off the plane at the other end.

Also the lady who sat on the cold floor of the high street for 2 hours when my DM had tripped and broken her wrist and leg. She knelt there propping my DM up while we waited for the ambulance. I didn't get her number in the rush when the ambulance arrived, and I wish I could find her to thank her, she was amazing. It was 11 years ago now I'll always remember her kindness.

I was 16. Sat on a bench in Bow, London.

It was 7am-ish. I had been beaten again by my boyfriend.

A woman sat next to me, stroked my arm and said "he will kill you" and left.
I stood up went home and never went back to him again, it's like I got a weird strength from her.

I went to sit in the park one afternoon after a particularly bad day at work. I was feeling pretty low. A lady sat nearby with her toddling twins, who ran over to me to say hello. Their mum kept trying to drag them away but they kept running back! They were so very lovely and really helped lift me up at a point I felt very down.