Has a random act of kindness stayed in your memory forever?

Where did lisalisa go??? I want to know if it was her that helped ghosty.

I've got two small ones.

When I was tiny, I got stuck in some mudflats after venturing out to try and fetch a shell, and a lovely lady in a white dress fished me out. Where were my parents, you might ask. They were in a pub garden. These were unreconstructed times...

And a couple of years ago I was trying to unload a very heavy microwave oven from the boot of my car when two young teenage boys came past and offered to help me with it up the stairs to my flat. It was a tiny thing really but it got me thinking, as I just wouldn't expect boys that age to be helpful so it revised my opinion of the Youth of Today.

One night after drinking in London, I hopped on the train to get hom and promptly feel asleep. Luckily a man who caught the same train as me in the morning happened to be catching a late night train home too. When it got to our stop, he woke me up and I stumbled from the train - too bleary eyed to even thank him. (I could have ended up in deepest darkest west country!)

I resolved to thank him the next day on the regular 7.28 train into London.... I never saw him again, so never got to thank him. I think of him as my train angel!

I was (just) holding it together until the story of Custardo's rock.

Hasn't done anything for my ability to type though .

Nothing to add but- this thread is wonderful, it's had me in tears here. Than ks for making me smile today [smiile].

Another one, we were holidaying in a cottage in the highlands and stupidly only took food for the first night as we planned to buy what we needed locally. The next morning we had a series of disasters, we drove to the local shop (20 miles, lol!) to find the cash machine wasn't working and we had barely a penny between us. We asked the shopkeeper where the nearest one was (50 miles away)only to find the car wouldn't start.
The lovely lovely lady came out to see what was happening, closed up the shop and took us to the local pub where the landlord gave us drinks and cake on the house. His son was the local mechanic, but wouldn't be back until the morning.
The shopkeeper insisted on driving us home and handed us a box packed with groceries and told us to drop some money back when we could. The next afternoon the landlords son arrived in his van to tell us our car was fixed and he'd drive us to pick it up.
DH picked up the car, drove to the cash machine and back to the pub to pay but the lad winked and said just get a few in for me next time you're in the pub. We went that night and had a lovely evening drinking with him and his friends.

The sense of community and kindness astounded me but I suppose living in such an isolated area you have to rely on and trust each other.

Ah London cabbies... a friend of mine finally plucked up the courage to leave her abusive boyfriend and organised a cab during the day so she could take all her stuff away while he was at work. But he turned up while she was there and started making a huge scene, threatening her, pleading, hanging onto her ankles etc. The manly cabbie took control, forcefully got all my friend's stuff in the cab, told her ex he saw it all the time and she wouldn't be coming back, unpeeled him from her and drove her away.

On one of my first ventures out alone with my first baby I planned the trip really carefully so I could use tube stations that had lifts.
I had a lovely afternoon out, then got to the station to get home and found the lift wasn't working.
With a massive pram and feeling exhausted there was no way I could brave the escalator, and the thought of trying to squeeze onto two buses to get home was too much. I burst into tears.
A lady came over and asked if I needed any help. She offered to collapse the pram and take it down the escalator for me, then said 'hang on, what if you end up stuck at your stop when you get there?' She took £20 out of her purse and directed me to a black cab outside the station. I was so overwhelmed and refused, but she insisted and helped me get the pram in.
It was so lovely and thoughtful of her.

Especialy kind when I think of the number of times I've struggled up and down steps around London and not a single person has even looked my way, let alone offered to help.

When eldest DS was about 3 months old we were travelling to stay with my mother for a bank holiday weekend. She was very excited because she was on her own, my father having died a short time before, it was her first grandchild and our first visit, with him, to her house. Our car broke down half way, we called the RAC but it needed extensive work at a garage. We had home relay but couldn't have it taken to my mothers because my DH had to be back at work on the Tues. He went home with the car and so as not to disappoint my mother it was arranged that she would come to collect me.It was going to take her about 2 hours, so the RAC man took me to his home and his wife looked after me and DS until my mother arrived.I couldn't have sat on the roadside with baby and luggage for 2 hours, but it was very kind because we were not his problem.

When I was 6 months pg with dd2, I crashed my car into the back of another at a roundabout. Their car was slightly dented, my radiator was broken and spewing steam. Called insurance co. to send out towtruck, but was crying (for no good reason as I wasn't hurt). Lovely man on the phone said he would send the tow truck, he really needed more info from me but why didn't I just wait till I was home and had a chance to calm down and call back then? Then, when tow truck arrived (nearly an hour later), I was still crying. The mechanic got out of his cab, took one look at me and said 'Aw, darlin', it's only a car. As long as you and the baby are all right, it's only a lump of metal.' Then he got me into the cab of the truck and gave me a drink and a tissue before going to get the car onto the back. What a lovely man he was.

A good friend had to fly from Singapore to Sydney on her own with a baby and a very boisterous toddler. She was dreading the oh-God-don't-sit-next-to-me stares from the other passengers, but as soon as she sat down, the 20-ish woman beside her said "You look like you could use some help. Tell me what to do!" and for the whole flight she kept the toddler amused, minded the baby while my friend took the toddler to the loo and held the baby while she ate.

My friend is quite senior in a big bank, which at her instigation now sponsors the charity for which the helpful stranger works.

Yes, from this place, all my sons presents, it was amazing and something that cold never possibly be repeated in my life, or his.

Custardo it was and still is a huge pleasure and we know go there often and all call it Custardo's rock.

I was a very junior advertising person, but was invited to join some colleagues entertaining a client in Central London. I live in Wimbledon which is some way out of town.

The meal finished very late, and no provision had been made for any of us to get home. No-one else was going my way. The tubes had also stopped running by then.

I stood in Trafalgar Square for ages trying to flag a black cab, but none would stop, or were free.

Finally one cab, who didn't have his light on, stopped for me and asked where I wanted to go. He had finished for the night and wasn't going my way, but me made me sit in the back of his cab whilst he radioed for someone to come and take me home.

when i was 4 my dad died of a massive heart attack aged only 37. he died in front of me and i was 4.

i obviously have limited memories as i only had those couple of years to have any memories. one of those was of my mum in a yellow bikini on a rock that kinda just came out from the bank of Llyn Padarn in Wales. my dad and i were paddling and trying to catch fish. we had a caravan there near snowdonia.

i mentioned this on a thread and MOONDOG said she lived around there. she then took her whole family on walks around the lake - which is bloody huge on a trek to find this rock and this memory of someone whom she had never met on the internet.

her family must have been exhausted - but she found it

she too ictures of it and drew a very detailsed map to it

and i went there in 2006

Ooh, have just remembered mine
Flew to Oz on very cheap flight - not hugely comfortable journey. We were staying with friends who were not getting home for the evening, so then spent a day, with luggage on the beach/mooching round, wanting to go to sleep & have a shower. MAde our way towards friends house (various buses & ferries) - on our last bus journey, the driver came down to help us with our bags & started chatting/asked where we were heading. He made a detour to drop us off at our friends door - just totally what we needed.

Fab thread - i'm really welling up.

When i was 18 and just passed my test my battered old mini decided to break down as i was trying to turn right at a really busy junction.

Stuck in the middle of fast flowing traffic i started to panic until a couple of blokes got out of a white van behind me (shelve any stereotypes here) and helped to push my mini a nearby petrol station.

When owner of station turned out to be an utter knob and insisted in trying to fool me that it was a lack of petrol and sell me petrol. The two blokes towed me home (about 10 miles).

sigh!

I was going out with some 'superstar dj' who had just been offered a set at Glastonbury whilst we were going out. Unbeknownst to me he dumped me and took my name off the guest list.

I hitched to Glasto and made my way to the ticket bit thingy (normally jump the fence so all a bit new to me!!) and they had no idea / note of who I was.

After a whole day of sitting there looking forlorn in the drizzle waiting for twat boyfriend to show up they took pity on me and let me in anyway with VIP pass.

That was cool.

Just so many! There are alot of kind people out there.

Experienced many kindnesses last year when I had bad SPD and was on crutches while heavily pregnant. It hurt to walk and at one point I ended up sitting on a bench between the bus stop and my office pathetically crying. A taxi had just beeped at me for crossing the road too slowly and it was the last straw. A van driver insisted on carrying me to his van (no mean feat) and driving me right to the front door of the office.

A couple on their honeymoon who stopped and waited with my granny in the rain when she had broken down and was not in the AA, and then insisted on driving her to her destination.

My friend and I (aged 21) wandering dopily through Havana in the early evening when a motherly lady came out of her house and told us that this area was not safe and firmly directed us back to a safer bit of town.

In the middle of Mexico stupidly having spent the cash I had on me on a present then realising I didnt have enough for the bus fare back to where I was staying. A kind Canadian man paid for my ticket.

Loving this thread.

Not mine exactly, but my mum and step-dad were in a car accident just south of the Irish border, heading north. Ambulance came to take injured step-dad to hospital just across the border and mum stayed behind to deal with the police. The police weren't allowed to take her across the border to meet SD at the hospital, so they got a bus to stop for her. Bus driver heard what happened and told the passengers he was taking a short detour and drove her right to the hospital doors. Thought that was lovely.