To ask you to share some acts of kindness?

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Inspired by another lovely thread where OP finds it ridiculous that society would pay to help someone who broke their leg.

Can we share some acts of kindness we've done or witnessed to reassure each other that there are kind people out there?

During the heatwave I gave ice lollies to the staff at our nursery to eat on their breaks, and bought lots of sand so the children could use the sandpit which they couldn't afford to fill.

My husband accidentally drove our little car into a ditch in a country road with our 2 year old (slowly, small ditch, no harm done but car was stuck). I posted on a local Facebook group asking if anyone could help as our roadside rescue said they'd be 3 hours and my 2yo was in the car. Local man immediately came out, towed them out of the ditch and wouldn't take a penny for it.

I sent someone at work some impromptu lovely feedback yesterday and copied it to her manager and their manager. She messaged me to say that she’d been feeling really low about work recently and that had really given her a boost. Her manager’s manager also forwarded it on to their director so it had a much bigger impact than I’d thought.

A snail was trying to crawl cross warm tarmac in very hot weather so I picked him up and put him into a shaded leafy area beneath bushes 😊🐌

A few years ago, I had covid fairly badly (not hospitalised but not great). When my dog disappeared, kind people went and looked for him for me.

I used to take my dd in her pram for a walk through local woods every week. A tree came down across the path which made it really hard to continue (but turning would have meant going back up two hills and adding another few miles to the walk). The third week I asked on FB if it was still down as I wouldn’t go if it was. (I’d assumed it would have been sorted within the week which is why I risked it the second time.) Within a couple of hours a local replied saying he’d taken his chainsaw and cleared it.

A lovely Scottish couple came to mine and my daughter's assistance in Yorkshire, when my car stalled on a steep, narrow incline and I couldn't get it going again. I was having a full-blown panic attack. They pulled in behind us and the husband got into my car and drove it to the town we were heading for whilst I travelled in their car with his wife.

I allow a driver out or in on every car journey I make.

I let people with fewer items than me go before me at supermarket tills.

I once paid for an old gent's few items because he didn't have enough money.

I always try to save tired bees with sugar water.

I don't kill spiders 🙂

I don’t like spiders but I can’t kill them. I scoop them up and put them outside in the flowers.
I gave the postman a cold bottle of Evian water during the heatwave.

This reminded me of when I started driving, I was trying to forward park in a tight bay (bad idea!) and just got totally stuck and was panicking. A man saw and came over to guide me and was really kind.

Another time a car hit me (they went through a red) and knocked out my starter motor. I was heavily pregnant end of a long day of work emotional and exhausted, two men got out and pushed the car to the side of the road for me.

Also during the heatwave my husband got a cool box and stocked it with ice and cold drinks for the bin men and recycling men every week.

when my gran was on EOL care at home I had to go to the pharmacy in a supermarket 3 times a day to get the morphine. Couldn’t store it in the house.
It’s a £5 minimum spend in the shop for the carpark. I expected to just pay it.
The pharmacist saw what I was there for came out with a stack of car park payment exemption vouchers and said use what you need

I had held it together until then. I also had a duvet under my arm to buy as my well meaning uncle had fed my dog bacon and he had been very sick on mine. So a low moment all round.

Oh I know what you mean when some kindness just is the tipping point of you holding it in.

After I had my first baby we had to stay in hospital 5 days. We had an absolutely awful time due to negligence. We were finally allowed to leave after baby's last dose of antibiotics at 7pm, told doctor would be along any moment to give us prescription then we can go...stood and waited for that doctor until 11.30pm. I was so desperate to get out of that building. Just before we left a midwife who knew what I'd been through came and gave me a little bag of malteasers. I burst into tears

I gave a very tired looking medic an umbrella in a downpour recently.
She had just finished a shift and it poured out of the heavens. She had no coat.
I was driving near my parent’s house and pulled in and grabbed an umbrella and gave it to her. I couldn’t give her a lift as I had almost reached my destination and others were dependent on my getting there.
I hope i get my umbrella back as i shouted out my address through the downpour but sure it’s not important. I have more umbrellas.
The next day a very kind lady paid for my parking.
I had forgotten my credit card and the machine wouldn’t give change.
I only had €20 and the parking fee was €1.50.
I would have had to go to a shop and buy the cheapest thing to break up the €20 note. She saved me the hassle. ❤️

Ladies at a care home local to hospital where I work knitted hearts for neonatal babies. The ladies were all in their 90s and came on a minibus to present them, even though they weren’t allowed to meet any of the babies due to IPV. They just wanted to do something for our youngest patients. I thought that was so gorgeous.

In 1996, I had just started uni and was getting to know all the new people in my halls. A group of us walked to the supermarket, and I ended up with several heavy bags of shopping. One of the girls I just met insisted on carrying some of my bags back as she only had a couple. I was sure she must have some alternative agenda, maybe she was trying to get me on side for some reason, why was she sucking up? However, I quickly discovered she had no alterior motive and was just a really kind decent person, who would always offer help to someone who needed it. She was also a great laugh who loved a drink and a dance, so we quickly became good friends and 30 years later, she's still one of my most cherished friends, and still an incredibly good person. I'm not such a miserable cynic when I meet new people these days!

Oh that's lovely! I crochet baby blankets and donate them to a local hospital but have only ever posted them

When I was a child my parents were abusive and neglectful. My lovely teacher knew and she and the HT had tried hard to get social services interested but they weren’t (by father was having an affair with at least two local social workers 🙄).

Every day she she asked me into the classroom early to finish my work from the day before, but that was just so all the kids didn’t know she was giving me breakfast.

At the Christmas Fayre she rigged part of a tombola (which she had set up out of her own pocket to give every child a ticket purely so she could rig it for me to win the big prize) so that I won a backpack full of non-perishable foods - little cereal boxes, the small milk cartons that we got in school, crisps, crackers and juices - to try and help against my father’s habit of starving us as punishment. One of my brothers helped me hide the bag and we all snacked through the holidays.

I met her again relatively recently when she retired. I saw notice of her retirement and messaged the school, they invited me along to the leaving assembly and we had a few very tearful moments afterwards.

@JustAnotherWhinger oh gosh. That’s so sad. What a lovely lady she was.

Maybe it's where I live and work, but I see far more kindness in RL than MN would suggest reflects the population. Barely a day goes by when I don't see someone lifting other people's cases and buggies on to trains or up stairs, staff in the nearby supermarket express giving sandwiches to the street sleepers outside, the mobile 'curry van' soup kitchen from the mosque. You need only stand still looking puzzled to have someone ask if you're OK, and if you should slip or trip, you're fighting off crowds picking you up, offering a sit down in their shop, water etc.

Out with my Dalmatian .very wet underfoot! 2 lovely ladies came to my aid as I had taken a path through the woods ,had to hang on for dear life !They kindly helped me (I have a stick) and asked if it was my Dal that had run off and had to be caught my DH!

It was BTW!

Last summer I was waiting at the bus stop, when a blind man with white stick and all got off a bus, realised he couldn’t get across the busy road. Bus driver got off stopped traffic on both sides of the road to walk him across arm in arm-then everyone in their vehicle's started honking and cheering, it was lovely to witness and restored my faith in humanity for a few days.

I helped a fly. I'm disgusted with myself. It was stuck on its back and exhausted so I flipped it over, gave it a little puddle of water which it crawled to and drank some, then gave it a ride outside on a piece of tissue. It lives to irritate someone another day.

I paid a woman’s bus fare when her card kept declining as she tried to board. In all honesty I was just impatient and wanted to get on and sit down, so I just leaned over and tapped my card. Didn’t expect her to burst into tears and say that she would have been late for the third time this month if she’d missed the bus. and probably faced disciplinary action

I was walking down a street about 6am (early start to work for a meeting)and as I got to a side street a cyclist was cycling up the road to turn on to the main road. He stopped, smiled and waved at me to continue walking. I waved and said 'thanks'. He smiled and said 'have a lovely day'. Really made me smile and a lovely start to my day

A friend was having lunch outdoors st Borough Market London last month. She discovered her bag had been taken and went into panic mode as everything was in that bag. The security immediately began looking down side roads and incredibly the bag and all the contents bar cash was still in there. Cctv showednhownthey had used a foot to hook the bag between the railings while another distracted. When she returned a big cheer went up from all. The lunch was paid for and also a note plus £50 cash from another table that had already left. It was an American tourist and said he wanted to make sure she could at least get home. Friend the next day went and lit a candle and donated.

The husband of one of my DH’s former patients who died a couple of years ago brings us fruit and veg from his allotment regularly. I make him cakes (or mince pies at Christmas!) in return.

A lovely local person paid for DM’s shopping when she couldn’t find her card. (She’d left it in another shop and was in a right tizz). We found the man via the power of our local FB page and got him a lovely bottle of whisky (and repaid the £40).

People are mostly lovely ime.

I gave a delivery driver a bottle of water from the fridge during the heatwave because he didn't have any water.

When I was having a nightmare journey with my complex needs teenager and we were stuck at Victoria with all lines to our area closed at rush hour, and he was in full meltdown, so many women helped me. Someone bought us cold drinks, others said they didn't know what to do to help but wanted to stand by me so I wasn't alone. Others tried to help find alternative routes for us and another got us an uber to share home. It was one of the worst days I've had with him but the kindness of strangers was overwhelming.

A year later I was at butlins with my daughter and saw a woman on her own with her teenager who clearly had additional needs and was in meltdown. I remembered how it felt when people helped me and went over to her and waited with her til her husband came so she wasn't feeling alone with it.