Random Act of Kindness Thwarted

In my first ever post on this blog, I wrote that I thought the practice of picking up someone's tab (at McDonald's, a gas station, a grocery store, wherever) could too easily be interpreted as insulting and raise suspicion where I live - NYC. And I still believe that.

However, I had a rare opportunity to make someone's evening a little easier last night. I was picking up my take-out order at a local diner, and a woman (clearly a regular) stopped in to pick up a cup of tea with honey for her throat. She opened her wallet and realized she didn't have any cash, and the diner has a $10 minimum for debit cards. I tapped her on the shoulder and said "Merry Christmas", then turned to the cashier and told him to put it on my tab. Her jaw dropped - for a brief moment, I rendered a fellow New Yorker speechless...well, for a moment, she started going on about how she had every intention to perpetuate the gesture, how wonderful I was, etc. until the manager came over to see what the mild ruckus was, and chimes in "Your tea is on the house - what are friends for? You're here all the time."

I guess I set a little something in motion there, and it didn't cost anybody anything...well, maybe a few pennies to the diner for a teabag and honey packets.

Playing Santa is a heartbreaker

In my last post, I quoted a craigslist ad posted by a woman trying to give her kids a Christmas. Well, on Friday morning, she showed up with her three adorable kids to pick up the box of goodies - arts & crafts supplies, plus a game of Clue - in my lobby. She started crying, in a tears-only, no-sobbing kind of way, and I may have gotten more than a little choked up myself. Here I'd spent the whole week freaking out about my lease renewal and lack of business, and meeting this little family gave me back some perspective.

Saturday, I took the train home to visit my mom and told her about the experience. When we got up in the morning, she was still curled up under the blanket when she said "I can't stop thinking about that mom and her kids". So we went shopping for another batch of presents for them...she really wanted to give them the ingredients for a nice Christmas breakfast (she's a huge fan of all breakfast food), but that just wasn't going to work logistically. Instead, we put together a very motherly care package amongst the toys - cold medicine, toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoo, cake mix and candles for the next birthday in the family, dishwashing liquid and new sponges, odd things like that in addition to Twister, Uno, Hanna Montana bits, Krazy straws.

Years of living in Manhattan have made me averse to allowing new people into my life, and I normally would have avoided this type of situation in case it resulted in frequent requests for money or support. As a fledgling attempt to overcome my minor paranoia, it is so far working like a dream. I'm more likely to give when not being pushed, and I really do like knowing whose life I'm improving in some small way. I also caught an undercurrent during the brief meeting in my lobby that I was some kind of proof to her abused children that good people do exist. I wasn't looking for that...you know, I don't think I really thought through what I was doing at all. I just wanted the feelgood of giving someone a Christmas, but it has turned out to be so much more than that.

Christmas Giving Plans

At Christmastime, I prefer to do something more personal and interactive than just handing over money. I like to feel more...Christmas-y. One year, I spent a few afternoons with New York Cares, matching up Santa letters from poor kids with Secret Santa wannabes. It wasn't terribly "social", but I enjoyed the task anyway. My mom's first job at age 16 was handling this sort of thing at the local mall...and a year later she was unofficially managing the place because the manager and assistant manager died and no one bothered replacing them because she was ridiculously competent. Yup, at 17, she managed a huge mall all by herself working 3 hours a day. But I'm getting off the subject...

I would love to find a way to wrap presents for charity. Ideally, people could bring me their presents and I'd wrap them for a suggested donation, but that might require way too much trust for your typical New Yorker. Another possibility is offering to wrap for charities that collect gifts for kids and the elderly. I assume they have some kind of group wrapping session... I'll set myself an email reminder to look into it in 2 weeks, because I suspect it's too early for all that to be in place yet.