Kindness shouldn't surprise people ...

[Bibiboo]

but it does!

I was leaving a car park yesterday when a lady came up to me and asked did I mind if she used my parking ticket as she'd parked then realised she didn't have any cash to pay for a ticket. I only had 10 minutes left on my ticket, but I said I could give her the 30p for an hour so she could get to a bank etc. When I opened my purse, I only had £1 so I gave her that. She was astounded and said she couldn't take £1 and started to blush. I made her take it because:

1. I've parked without change myself and had to rely on either the kindness of strangers or hope that a warden didn't come while I sprinted to the bank, and
2. because it's nice to help people, right? That was the way I was brought up.

She just kept saying how kind it was and thanked me about a million times. Thinking about it today I realised that kindness is getting more and more rare isn't it?

Let's all be kind to people and bring kindness back!

is it getting more and more rare?

you only really know when you need help. when i travelled to the uk on my own with the kids in summer I was absolutely gobsmacked by how helpful people were - and what particularly surprised me was that the British were if anything more helpful than the Spanish (and I've been noticing how kind the Spanish are when babies are involved since dd was born).

somebody went to get a trolley for me when I was stranded in the car park at Liverpool airport ("no, we don't keep trolleys in the car park because they get stolen"); at no point did I have to ask anyone to help with the pushchair up stairs - people were falling over themselves; a nice German lady pushed my baggage trolley from stansted airport to the car hire place so I could run after dd and push ds; several people caught ds for me when he ran off. Overall was very impressed!

my general experience is more like that of bibiboo. i try to be nice whenever i can and people are just so surprised. i find that i am also pathetically grateful if someone just holds a door open or similar. it is very sad, but i find people are less helpful when the kids are there

and yet it does!!

But doesn't it make your day. On my last week in London my wallet fell out of my bag on High St Kensington and as I was halfway through the park on my way home I got a phone call on my mobile the girl that had found it had opened it, found my library card, called the library to get my home number, called my home number to get my mobile off the answer phone then called to say she had my wallet. It had about £50 and all my cards etc and as I was leaving the country within 3 days it would have been a nightmare to cancel and replace everything.
It simply made my day and I hope that someday I can do the same for somebody as what goes around comes around eventually.