Pay it Forward GAW #2

Maroco

Maroco

Gold Member
Joined
May 19, 2024
Messages
412
I was lucky enough to win the last Pay it Forward GAW. I wanted to keep the idea rolling. There isn't enough kindness in this world, I'd like to keep adding to it!

We have a cool little EDC package up for grabs!

Milspin aluminum box cutter. Comes with extra blades!

Boker Plus Krein PSK. Like new condition, comes with sheath.

4seven Q mini 123 flashlight! (Comes with pouch but needs a battery)

Rules:
GAW will run for 2 weeks. I'll pick the winner via a random drawing app the night of August 31st.

Tell me who the kindest person you've ever met is/was with a "I'm in" to enter.

Must have 150 or more posted messages to enter.

I'll update the list of entries ever other night.

Good luck, everyone!




Snapchat-572713778.jpgSnapchat-1833628303.jpg
 
Hope overseas entrees are allowed, this gaw is just too generous! Happy to help out on shipping if it turns out to be my luck day on August 31.

Kindest person I ever met is my girlfriend Vicky. She has such a big heart, always ready fo anyone who needs a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on. She spends loads of energy keeping in touch with many people she met over the years. And as a teacher she made the difference in many of her students lives.

Thanks for the generosity and goodluck to everyone. :D
 
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knoefz said:
Hope overseas entrees are allowed, this gawhe s is just too gener! Happy to help out on shipping if it turns out to be my luck day on August 31.

Kindest person I ever met is my girlfriend Vicky. She has such a big heart, always ready fo anyone who needs a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on. She spends loads of energy keeping in touch with many people she met over the years. And as a teacher she made the difference in many of her students lives.

Thanks for the generosity and goodluck to everyone. :D
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I will ship it anywhere! You are in! Thank you for sharing. Vicky sounds like a wonderful person.
 
I'll be in. I'm sure I could come up with a decent pay-it-forward package.

I'm having trouble coming up with anyone kinder than my wife, but that feels too easy. Instead I want to talk about one of the most generous moments I've ever experienced:

I worked security for more than a decade in downtown Seattle. I got to know most of the long-time homeless folks. When I started there were still a lot of the people who had been homeless since Reagan bounced the non-violent mentally ill out of federally funded psychiatric hospitals. These were the people too crazy to function in society, but not dangerous to society, so they were just left to find ways to survive in a world where they couldn't follow rules well enough to have jobs or homes, but also weren't going to be cared for or imprisoned. By the mid-aughts most of those older crowd had died, and one of the last ones was a man named Jeffrey.

When I started doing security, Jeffrey was a tall wild eyed man with piercing blue eyes and a big bushy beard, and an incredibly loud growling shout. He looked like John Brown, and he would scare people with his angry shouting. People would assume that he was yelling at them, he was actually yelling at his reflection. He had a real problem with reflective surfaces, and most modern high rise buildings have a lot of reflective surfaces. I worked at several buildings where we had to have him trespassed, which is how I learned his name.

As he got older he shrank and turned very grey. And his shouting was less scary since his voice wore down to a grumpy croak. People often called him Uncle Sam (which made him extremely angry). I had learned over the years that if you called him by his proper name he would quiet down and become more lucid. When guards would call him Uncle Sam or get rude with him he would just escalate until the cops had to be called to get him to leave.

When I became a supervisor I trained my officers to call him by his name, Jeffrey. And sure enough, none of them ever had trouble when we needed him to move along.

One day when I went out to the alley to have a cigarette, Jeffrey was out there. He wasn't bothering anyone, but when he saw me he croaked, "I'll get going." But I told him to relax, no one was being bothered, he could rest a while longer. Then I realized that I had forgotten my cigarettes. When Jeffrey saw that, he offered me the cigarette he had in his pocket.

I thought it was the most generous thing I had ever experienced. Jeffrey literally had nothing but the clothes on his back and the contents of his pockets since the 1980s, and he offered me a cigarette because I had treated him like a person.

I told him no thanks because I was about 30 feet from my office, and had cigarettes that had not been living in someone's pocket. But when I came back out we both enjoyed our respective cigarettes. And it was a very nice moment in a career that often had very unpleasant moments.
 
abbydaddy said:
I'll be in. I'm sure I could come up with a decent pay-it-forward package.

I'm having trouble coming up with anyone kinder than my wife, but that feels too easy. Instead I want to talk about one of the most generous moments I've ever experienced:

I worked security for more than a decade in downtown Seattle. I got to know most of the long-time homeless folks. When I started there were still a lot of the people who had been homeless since Reagan bounced the non-violent mentally ill out of federally funded psychiatric hospitals. These were the people too crazy to function in society, but not dangerous to society, so they were just left to find ways to survive in a world where they couldn't follow rules well enough to have jobs or homes, but also weren't going to be cared for or imprisoned. By the mid-aughts most of those older crowd had died, and one of the last ones was a man named Jeffrey.

When I started doing security, Jeffrey was a tall wild eyed man with piercing blue eyes and a big bushy beard, and an incredibly loud growling shout. He looked like John Brown, and he would scare people with his angry shouting. People would assume that he was yelling at them, he was actually yelling at his reflection. He had a real problem with reflective surfaces, and most modern high rise buildings have a lot of reflective surfaces. I worked at several buildings where we had to have him trespassed, which is how I learned his name.

As he got older he shrank and turned very grey. And his shouting was less scary since his voice wore down to a grumpy croak. People often called him Uncle Sam (which made him extremely angry). I had learned over the years that if you called him by his proper name he would quiet down and become more lucid. When guards would call him Uncle Sam or get rude with him he would just escalate until the cops had to be called to get him to leave.

When I became a supervisor I trained my officers to call him by his name, Jeffrey. And sure enough, none of them ever had trouble when we needed him to move along.

One day when I went out to the alley to have a cigarette, Jeffrey was out there. He wasn't bothering anyone, but when he saw me he croaked, "I'll get going." But I told him to relax, no one was being bothered, he could rest a while longer. Then I realized that I had forgotten my cigarettes. When Jeffrey saw that, he offered me the cigarette he had in his pocket.

I thought it was the most generous thing I had ever experienced. Jeffrey literally had nothing but the clothes on his back and the contents of his pockets since the 1980s, and he offered me a cigarette because I had treated him like a person.

I told him no thanks because I was about 30 feet from my office, and had cigarettes that had not been living in someone's pocket. But when I came back out we both enjoyed our respective cigarettes. And it was a very nice moment in a career that often had very unpleasant moments.
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Amazing story my guy. Thank you for sharing. That was a huge gesture from Jeffery. Glad it stuck with you all this time!!

Keep 'em coming, guys!
 
I’m in. We have this older lady I would say 70s to 80s that comes to my work every other Friday for the farmers market. She is so precious and helpful. She will do anything for anyone. This past Friday she was trying to carry my watermelon to my truck that was parked 3/4 a mile away while it was 105 degrees. Obviously I wouldn’t let her but I brought her water and listened to her stories for awhile.
 
Sleepereaper said:
I’m in. We have this older lady I would say 70s to 80s that comes to my work every other Friday for the farmers market. She is so precious and helpful. She will do anything for anyone. This past Friday she was trying to carry my watermelon to my truck that was parked 3/4 a mile away while it was 105 degrees. Obviously I wouldn’t let her but I brought her water and listened to her stories for awhile.
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Nothing quite like older southern ladies, they can have such a charm about them. Something I've really loved since moving south, people seem more kind. I attribute it to the lack of negative degree weather 🤣
 
I’m in if you’ll let me.

And most kind person I’ve ever met would be my mom. For various reasons. I’ll say I was one of those kids growing up. That should have automatically qualified my mom for saint status. Between intentional and unintentional behaviors. I recall one nasty fight growing up. I mentioned l was just a “rebound baby” as I had an older sister who was stillborn. After the argument and tempers cooled. I pretty quickly regretted that. But being young and dumb. There was no way my pride would let me admit that to her. Some years later as I matured I did finally apologize. And in turn apologized for holding on to that for so long. Her response has always stuck with me. “I know you are buddy.” As I’ve matured our relationship has gotten stronger and I’m amazed how little she let phase her. And how little she ever held against me. To this day she continues to apologize for things she did. That seem trivial. I’m the oldest child. And we were both learning.

But she’s a ER RN, actually running an emergency department at a hospital where they live. And seeing her care and dedication to anyone who walks in the door. I don’t personally have the patience to deal with half of that. Between the people who come to ER for a toothache. Or the pill seekers who come in weekly. Mom sees that, but treats them as they come and as they can (obviously you can’t give out narcotics like they want. But mom tries to comfort their “pain” in other ways. Be it a sack lunch or just someone to talk to.)

Growing up going on vacations, she’d often round up all the hotel soaps and shampoos and whatnot. And make little care packages for any homeless she came across. If there weren’t any, she’d bring them home and they would get added to the next church outreach.

It’s silly and makes me feel bad typing some of that. But it’s in the past. No one is who they were 15 years ago. But I like how you encouraged stories and spreading kindness and compassion outside of a GAW. And in a world that can often seem dark and colder. It’s a real joy reading these stories. So thank you Maroco Maroco for this beautiful GAW. And thank you everyone else for your stories!
 
Midgetje93 said:
I’m in if you’ll let me.

And most kind person I’ve ever met would be my mom. For various reasons. I’ll say I was one of those kids growing up. That should have automatically qualified my mom for saint status. Between intentional and unintentional behaviors. I recall one nasty fight growing up. I mentioned l was just a “rebound baby” as I had an older sister who was stillborn. After the argument and tempers cooled. I pretty quickly regretted that. But being young and dumb. There was no way my pride would let me admit that to her. Some years later as I matured I did finally apologize. And in turn apologized for holding on to that for so long. Her response has always stuck with me. “I know you are buddy.” As I’ve matured our relationship has gotten stronger and I’m amazed how little she let phase her. And how little she ever held against me. To this day she continues to apologize for things she did. That seem trivial. I’m the oldest child. And we were both learning.

But she’s a ER RN, actually running an emergency department at a hospital where they live. And seeing her care and dedication to anyone who walks in the door. I don’t personally have the patience to deal with half of that. Between the people who come to ER for a toothache. Or the pill seekers who come in weekly. Mom sees that, but treats them as they come and as they can (obviously you can’t give out narcotics like they want. But mom tries to comfort their “pain” in other ways. Be it a sack lunch or just someone to talk to.)

Growing up going on vacations, she’d often round up all the hotel soaps and shampoos and whatnot. And make little care packages for any homeless she came across. If there weren’t any, she’d bring them home and they would get added to the next church outreach.

It’s silly and makes me feel bad typing some of that. But it’s in the past. No one is who they were 15 years ago. But I like how you encouraged stories and spreading kindness and compassion outside of a GAW. And in a world that can often seem dark and colder. It’s a real joy reading these stories. So thank you Maroco Maroco for this beautiful GAW. And thank you everyone else for your stories!
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You're in!

Thank you for sharing. It sounds like you have a great mom and , she is lucky enough to have a son that appreciates her! It seems very fitting that a parent would be the kindest person most of us have met. At least, that's how I'd like it to work all the time!
 
Maroco said:
You're in!

Thank you for sharing. It sounds like you have a great mom and , she is lucky enough to have a son that appreciates her! It seems very fitting that a parent would be the kindest person most of us have met. At least, that's how I'd like it to work all the time!
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In a perfect story. I’m just wise enough and swallowed enough pride to admit I was a bit part of my own struggles growing up. Didn’t see it that way then.
 
The kindest person I've ever known was my mom but for the sake of looking farther I would say my friend's dad Chris. I met him when I was 5 or 6 when I become friends with his son's at church, he quickly decided I should come spend the night with his boys. He was always listening to whatever you had to say and he always has something interesting to talk about. He reads anything and everything he can find and often reads a book a day. He suffers from extreme headaches and had a pretty rough childhood but he is the most patient and soft spoken person I have ever known. He routinely brings the unhoused to dinner at his house.After his first wife died of a long and painful form of brain cancer he opened his home to anyone that needed a place to stay for a couple years. I watched him give strangers any and all the help he could. Once when I was about 8 I was with him and his son's and a man was walking by and Chris asked him if he needed anything to drink as it was quite hot out that day, the man said that he was fine but Chris kept asking if there was anything he needed as he walked past and they began to talk for a while as we kids played in the yard. Then I hear the man say loudly "no sir, I couldn't do that!" And I see Chris begin to unbutton his shirt. After a moment the man clearly giving in to Chris took the shirt from Chris and put it on. As the man left down the street I heard Chris say "good luck with the interview!" and his older son asked why was the man leaving with his dad's shirt. Chris came over to us boys and said " that man is walking to a job interview and he mentioned he was wearing his best clothes but hadn't noticed a stain on his shirt when he left the house and he was to far and would be late if he went back and besides he didn't have any other button down shirts to wear anyway. So Chris said he should take his shirt because they look like the same size and he was just hanging out with us boys and didn't need to be dressed up so much anyway. (He always wore a button shirt even when doing yard work.) So he tell us kids that he thought if he had told the man to wait and went to get him another shirt from inside he would have refused the help or left before he came back out but he knew if he just gave him the one off his back the man would take it and he was right. That man came back later to return the shirt and tell Chris he had gotten the job and he ended up staying for dinner and leaving with three sets of clothes for his new job. Chris convinced him to take the clothes because he would need them and Chris knew he had other expenses that he should spend his first check on. So yes he would literally give you the shirt off his back. When I got a older he would ask me out of the blue if I had a few dollars and I would check my pockets, he would wait to see how much I had and then make me take some cash("Because a young man should have walking around money"). He is the example of what a Christian man is to me, what it would look like if someone actually took the words of Jesus and applied them like the Bible says we should do. I don't want to enter the contest I just wanted to tell you about Chris.
 
thebrain said:
The kindest person I've ever known was my mom but for the sake of looking farther I would say my friend's dad Chris. I met him when I was 5 or 6 when I become friends with his son's at church, he quickly decided I should come spend the night with his boys. He was always listening to whatever you had to say and he always has something interesting to talk about. He reads anything and everything he can find and often reads a book a day. He suffers from extreme headaches and had a pretty rough childhood but he is the most patient and soft spoken person I have ever known. He routinely brings the unhoused to dinner at his house.After his first wife died of a long and painful form of brain cancer he opened his home to anyone that needed a place to stay for a couple years. I watched him give strangers any and all the help he could. Once when I was about 8 I was with him and his son's and a man was walking by and Chris asked him if he needed anything to drink as it was quite hot out that day, the man said that he was fine but Chris kept asking if there was anything he needed as he walked past and they began to talk for a while as we kids played in the yard. Then I hear the man say loudly "no sir, I couldn't do that!" And I see Chris begin to unbutton his shirt. After a moment the man clearly giving in to Chris took the shirt from Chris and put it on. As the man left down the street I heard Chris say "good luck with the interview!" and his older son asked why was the man leaving with his dad's shirt. Chris came over to us boys and said " that man is walking to a job interview and he mentioned he was wearing his best clothes but hadn't noticed a stain on his shirt when he left the house and he was to far and would be late if he went back and besides he didn't have any other button down shirts to wear anyway. So Chris said he should take his shirt because they look like the same size and he was just hanging out with us boys and didn't need to be dressed up so much anyway. (He always wore a button shirt even when doing yard work.) So he tell us kids that he thought if he had told the man to wait and went to get him another shirt from inside he would have refused the help or left before he came back out but he knew if he just gave him the one off his back the man would take it and he was right. That man came back later to return the shirt and tell Chris he had gotten the job and he ended up staying for dinner and leaving with three sets of clothes for his new job. Chris convinced him to take the clothes because he would need them and Chris knew he had other expenses that he should spend his first check on. So yes he would literally give you the shirt off his back. When I got a older he would ask me out of the blue if I had a few dollars and I would check my pockets, he would wait to see how much I had and then make me take some cash("Because a young man should have walking around money"). He is the example of what a Christian man is to me, what it would look like if someone actually took the words of Jesus and applied them like the Bible says we should do. I don't want to enter the contest I just wanted to tell you about Chris.
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Wow, thank you for sharing! It sounds like Chris does his very best to bring heaven to earth. What an amazing example of selfless. People like that seem harder and harder to come by.
 
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