Strangers you remember fondly

[Conkernudge]

Thought it would be nice to have a thread talking about strangers who have touched your life, or who you remember for a good reason.

Mine:
My DH and I were heading up a long flight of stairs at a train station when suddenly we saw a frail old man overbalance near the top and start falling. My husband dived sideways and managed to catch him before he went head over heels. As the man was falling the lady he was with shouted “Stanley!” crossly. I’m sure she was terrified, rather than cross, but she gave him a bit of a telling off when she caught up with him, despite holding his hand tightly. They were obviously married or partners and he’d given her the shock of her life.

Now whenever I criticise my husband for something minor he goes “Stanley!” as though i’m telling him off for something unreasonable and we laugh.

The fall happened probably about 12 years ago now and it’s just stuck with us. We hope we’ll grow old together like they did.

So, which stranger do you remember and why?

I went into town with DS when he was around 3 months old. We were in a lift in Asda with a lady who asked me how old he was. I answered and she touched my arm and asked how I was. I felt like absolute shit but the fact that a stranger went to the trouble of asking me how I was has really stuck with me.

i fell and broke my leg a few weeks ago whilst i was out alone

i was in a public place and within about 2 seconds i was surrounded by a crowd of people who just couldn't do enough for me

i was bought drinks, given food and someone called an ambulance,other people sat with me until i was taken to hospital

so so much kindness :) i'm very grateful xx

Very kind man driving a road train along a quiet part of a dirt track road in Australia some 20 years ago.
My friend and I had hired a car to get from some remote place to another, and being unfamiliar with the roads had skidded and nearly gone into a ravine. Whilst still in some degree of shock, friend walked back the way we'd come hoping to see another vehicle.
Road train man hooked the car up to chains, made sure all was safe and waited until we'd driven off.

Looking back anything could have happened to us, and nobody would have known.

I love this thread, faith in humanity restored a little bit tonight.

My own is from when DD was 2 days old, we’d just been released from hospital and as she came early we had no where for her to sleep. The cot wasn’t due until a week before her due date as I was sure I’d go over. Anyway we nipped to the local babies r us for some sheets for her pram cot that she could sleep in for now. DD was just in my arms wrapped in a blanket. Got to the till and the women in front looked a bit perplexed at me. She looked around and then laughed and said she thought I’d been holding a real baby but it was clearly a doll. I laughed back and said no she was real and 2 days old. We chatted for a minute or two about babies and children etc. Then she picked up a Christmas book from the till and added it to her shopping. I didn’t think anything of it until she turned back after paying and gave us the book for DD, wished us a merry Christmas and hoped that our lives with dD would be filled with joy.

We read the book to add every Christmas and I can’t wait to tell her the story of such a kind lady.

I was about 20 weeks pregnant with dd2, working full time as a travelling advisor. I was waiting to see a client in their reception area, and an elderly lady was sitting opposite me.
She told he she had worked as a midwife all her life and loved her job, I wasn’t really listening to her, was just stressing about my meeting - hoping I wouldn’t be sick in it (had severe HG).
Just as I was getting up to go into see my client, she shouted across the reception area “your waters Dear, promise me you’ll watch your waters?”. I smiled and said “yes, ok, thank you!” Thinking she was a bit crazy.
At 36 weeks, I was at home, cleaning cupboards and as I bent down, I thought I’d wee’d myself, then realised I hadn’t, then suddenly remembered this lady shouting to me.
I drove myself straight to hospital, I had only 5% fluid left. My waters had been very slowly leaking for ages. I almost lost my baby girl, and might have done if I hadn’t acted straightaway when I remembered this woman’s words.
I will remember her forever.

We travelled to Australia when ds was nearly 4. DS managed to stay awake for nearly the whole 23 hour journey, but managed to finally fall asleep as the plane landed! We were exhausted from entertaining him for all that time and pretty slow getting to the immigration queue due to having to carry ds. The queue was horrendous, but a lovely airport man came straight over to us and ushered us straight through what I think was the cabin crew desk. I was so grateful to him, I could have cried.

Lovely thread!

Two:

When I was in my early twenties my grandad died. As we were travelling to his funeral I saw a women stop on the footpath, face the car and draw the sign of a cross on her chest. I'm not religious at all but was so touched by her showing such respect to compete strangers.

A more recent one was when I was in A&E with my youngest. I was really upset and tearful. A lady who was also waiting to be seen came over and gave me a cuddle and told me it would all be ok. She was so kind and really helped calm me down.

ILoveBakingCookies do you think she saw something in you or was it just a general warning?

While visiting New York in 2006, we went to the Ground Zero site. It was such a sobering place, and I was feeling the enormity of what it represented. A man obviously noticed the tears running down my face and came over to me and put his hand gently on my arm. After a few seconds, he simply said "I know, it makes me think about how important it is to love each other." He then walked away.

After I lost my son , the first time I went out I got far far too drunk. Got myself into a fight, but started crying (not proud) the lady who I had roundly been shouting at, stopped shouting back , put her earrings back in (she was clearly a seasoned fighter and would have actually hurt me, idiot that I am!) , took me in her arms and asked what was wrong. I had been awful to her but she saw my pain and we spent four hours chatting after that. She changed my life.

When i was at uni, I was having a terrible time. I had to get home but couldn’t afford the bus ticket until I worked my last shift. I literally finished working in a bar, walked to the bus station and waited for it to open to buy my ticket. It was cold and dark and I was knackered. Truly miserable by the time I got on the bus not looking forward to arriving Home at all.
Of course the bus was busy so I was sitting next to another student who I didn’t know. Anyway i obviously fell asleep because when I woke up I was restinf my head on his shoulder and he’d put his coat over me. When I jumped up he put his arm round me (in a totally none creepy way) and carried on highlighting his notes. Something about eyeballs. It was the nicest, purest human contact I got all year.

This is a lovely thread. I love all these stories, especially BMW man!

I have a story from my grandpa's funeral. He'd been in the royal navy (in WW2 and afterwards) and he was in his 80s when he passed away. Anyway at his funeral, standing at the back of the church, alone, was a man of about 80-odd, in a Navy uniform, medals and everything. I didn't even notice him until we were all leaving the church, and he saluted the coffin as it passed. My grandma said afterwards she didn't know who he was. He must have been someone who'd served with my grandpa. It was just so moving to see him standing there at the end, saluting his old friend.

@WhatsGoingOnEh purely because that stranger had been so nice to me!

I was very hormonal in my defence!

When DD was a baby (in a pushchair) my DS (then 2) was obsessed with escalators. We were in primark and there was one to get up to the children’s section. DS had never really been a ‘runner’ but on this occasion he saw it and just went. I barely had time to react and he launched himself off the top of the ‘down’ one. It was horrendous - slow motion almost - and I was convinced he’d end up in a heap at the bottom. I was distraught but a lovely lady who worked there saw too and she was there before me. He was absolutely fine, but she chased him down and held his hand all the way back up so he couldn’t go off anywhere else.

She was so kind about it, despite my teary state. Always grateful to her for the compassion she showed.

I was on a train when I found out that my father had passed away. (I was on my way to visit him.) A lady near me overheard and fetched a cup of tea from the buffet trolley and wouldn't accept payment. Not only that, she stayed with me when we reached the London terminus and caught the tube with me until her stop. Such kindness I will always treasure.

I lay by the side of a busy road, having come off my bike and taken a good whack to the head. Cars kept passing, but I was too groggy to even move my arms. A guy in a van stopped and helped me up, ran me and the bike to A&E, and in my hearing told his boss that the job could fucking well wait. Not that it matters, but he was black, and given the local demographics the passers by would have been white. Yup, like that.

The other one was the family in Germany who took us into their house after DF crashed the car. I think DM sent them a Christmas card for years.

I was heavily pregnant with twins and had an early appointment at the hospital. I had to get the bus in to work that day and couldn't remember how close the bus went to the hospital. Although the driver told me the route ended about a 10 minute walk away, instead of stopping there he drove the bus all the way to the hospital and dropped me right in front!

The second was recently when we were starting a very long overseas flight, my three kids were playing up dreadfully in the departure gate at Heathrow, we were all very tired and irritable and we thankfully were boarded first. I was already sat in my seat and an older man stopped as he walked past me and said "you're doing an amazing job". I really felt like I wasn't and everyone was judging me and my kids so it meant a lot.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

@MNHQ surely this needs to go in Classics.