SimpleActsofGood

My son is 41. When he was about 14, while driving in a residential neighborhood, we saw a frail old lady at the side of her house struggling mightily to wrestle a large garbage container to the street. I pulled over and told my son to go take the garbage to the street for her. When he returned, I said, "Now doesn't that make you feel good?"

One Christmas when he was about eight, we tried to buy a few pieces of firewood for our Christmas fire, but understandably the vendors didn't want to reduce their cord for sale. They pointed to a flatbed truck nearby and said, "That guy may have some, and he could sure use the money." I walked over and found two young kids trying to sell clumps of mistletoe for 25 cents each. When the guy returned we followed him to an old rundown mobile home where he had a stack of split wood. I asked for three or four pieces for our fire. He started stacking wood in the station wagon until I had to stop him. "How much do I owe you?" I asked. "How about $5?"he said. "How about $20?" I replied. He paused, them said, "Well, we sure could use the money." My son, who knew his old man to be rather tight with a dollar, was looking at me like, "What have you done with my father?" On the ride home I had a great teachable moment about how to help someone without abasing them and not taking advantage of people.

If you have children, life is full of teachable moment opportunities. My son is a fine man now who still looks for opportunities to surprise people with unexpected help.
 
In regards to tipping, a server once told me that her worst tips of the week were from the after-church crowd on Sundays, and other servers have confirmed this when I asked. As a Christian I find that to be deplorable and resolved long ago that my wife and I would not be a part of that problem.
 
I walk a lot with my dog and see many animals dead in the road especially in the mornings. It pains me when one gets hit and then run over 100 times until there is just a red stain after a week. I picked up a possum last Sunday and tossed him in the bushes, may he rest in peace (better than in the road!). I'll spare you the story of another road killed possum that was carrying babies (I don't even like thinking about that one :().

Coming back to work today at lunch I gave an older dude $5 who said he was out of gas. Maybe he was just a scammer making $300 a day on people like me but I had not see him before. Anyway, figured it was good karma and he needed the five bucks more than me ...
 
Today I emptied out a small storage unit that I use for parts at work. We've stopped using this one and it needed to be closed. Everything of value was moved to another active unit of course, but there was a ton of obsolete or damaged stuff in there that needed to be disposed of. 3/4 of a dumpster worth to be exact.

As a paying tenant in this storage facility I'm more than welcome to dispose of my stuff in their dumpster. Their ONE dumpster. As I said, everything that needed to go would take up the majority, if not all of the dumpster. I could have just thrown everything in there haphazardly, wasted a ton of space and filled up the dumpster making it difficult or impossible for anyone else to use it. Instead, I stacked everything in a neat and organized manner, just like I would've loaded it into my vehicle, in a U shape around the inside of the dumpster. Now, what could've taken up all the space, only takes up 3/4 and it's arranged in such a way that you can still just walk up and throw something in without it hitting some of my trash and bouncing out. The remaining cavity is front and center.

It took me a little longer, but I've needed to throw away a leaking bag full of rotting who-knows-what before, only to find a dumpster full of someone else's Christmas boxed they were too lazy to break down. Where you have to decide to take the trash elsewhere, get creative and try to stack it, getting foul trash juice on yourself or just be an ass and leave the bag next to the dumpster. I didn't want to cause someone else that same inconvenience. As much as I could avoid it anyway.
 
I have a few good deed stories I can share, but you guys are seriously putting me to shame with yours.
 
Charlie_K said:
I have a few good deed stories I can share, but you guys are seriously putting me to shame with yours.
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You're just shy. You know no one is comparing good deeds. Everyone's sharing their stories so that it may inspire others to do and share also. If not that, at the least get a warm fuzzy feeling lol.

I have helped people push their cars out of traffic, jump start dead batteries, helped someone adjacent pump gas when he was short on cash, and various other things. But lately I haven't done anything truly noteworthy. I will keep an eye out and change that.
 
I don't have anything really recent, but when I am at Lowes or Home Depot, I always look in the parking lot to see if there are any elderly customers, or people that are trying to load something big or heavy into their vehicles, and ask if they would like a hand.
 
let's keep this topic alive with a little knife act of good.

i was just biking home from work ( i'm Dutch, every bikes home in this city.)
on the side of a bridge i saw a man with his bike upside down looking rather puzzled at his gears sortoff poking at it with a twig.
since he looked like he wasn't going to get it fixed that way and i had time to stop i felt i should atleast stop to see if i could help out.

as it turns out his chain had come off the gear, which is very hard to fix on a single gear bike.
with the twig he was trying to move the greased up chain in position to get it back on with his other hand which was just black from grease...
i didn't think he expected anyone to help, from the surprised look on his face when i offerd mine.

so i took out my Leatherman wave that i always keep in my backpack, and 3 minutes later the chain was back on and he was on his way. :)
 
As I mentioned in my post above I walk with my dog all around my neighborhood. I've started picking up trash as I walk by it and deposit it at the next available dumpster or can. Most times I don't have to carry the stuff very far and from my years of walking I know were they all are. Just seems so easy to me now although the dog thinks I'm wasting good rabbit hunting time :). It's really cool to pass by an area that I've looked at the same beer cans, soda cups, plastic bags, etc... and now it's clean. I told my kids I am single-handedly cleaning the whole neighborood. Maybe as people see me do it they will join in to help. :cool:

Oh, and I removed another flattened squirrel from the street Sunday morning.

Do good people, you'll feel better for it. :thumbsup:
 
A friend of mine found a cat that was suffering and appeared to be dying. He wanted to take it to the vet but could not afford it. I told him I would cover the vet bill. He said but it's not even your cat. My wife and I had the same thought. It is not our cat, but it is God's cat. The cat went to the vet where it had a quick and painless death.

Steve
 
So here's a story from a few days ago.

On friday i was riding my bike home from work and got into an accident. A couple bystanders all rushed over to help me who offerd to call 112 (911). I wasn't very hurt, no concussion or memory loss(as far as i could tell), so i told them not to but by now i was bleeding from my face as there was a cut under my eyebrow( about 3-4cm), so they suggested i should atleast go to the ER and get sticthes.
None of them were by car though, and my bike was wrecked and the ER atleast 45 min away on foot.

Lucky for me an onder lady drove by, saw a few people standing next to me with bloody face and asked if she could help.
Before i could even finish saying i had to go to the ER but no means of getting there she opened the passenger door and told me to hop in.

This nice lady drove me to the ER, waited with me for almost an HR as it was busy and some more severe cases were given priority.
She got me something to drink, fresh clotchs for the wond to stop the bleeding and even joined me as i got patched up by the doc.

After this she drove me back to my bike, put it in the back of her car and dropped me off at home.

She actually had plans to go to the grand opening of a new store that day, but instead she spent 3 hr's helping a young men she never met and probably will never meet again.

I did thank her about a 100 times.

There's good people around.

Maybe it was karma as i went to the same hospital the day before to donate blood, or maybe i just got lucky this lady was around.

Here's my face now.

Ended up not having to get stitches as the wound was very 'clean' and they used glue instead to get less unnesasairy scarring.

Got a lot of questions at work the next day. I work in a store so all the regular custumers very rather shocked to see my face.
Dk2OLFJ.jpg
 
basmca said:
So here's a story from a few days ago.

On friday i was riding my bike home from work and got into an accident. A couple bystanders all rushed over to help me who offerd to call 112 (911). I wasn't very hurt, no concussion or memory loss(as far as i could tell), so i told them not to but by now i was bleeding from my face as there was a cut under my eyebrow( about 3-4cm), so they suggested i should atleast go to the ER and get sticthes.
None of them were by car though, and my bike was wrecked and the ER atleast 45 min away on foot.

Lucky for me an onder lady drove by, saw a few people standing next to me with bloody face and asked if she could help.
Before i could even finish saying i had to go to the ER but no means of getting there she opened the passenger door and told me to hop in.

This nice lady drove me to the ER, waited with me for almost an HR as it was busy and some more severe cases were given priority.
She got me something to drink, fresh clotchs for the wond to stop the bleeding and even joined me as i got patched up by the doc.

After this she drove me back to my bike, put it in the back of her car and dropped me off at home.

She actually had plans to go to the grand opening of a new store that day, but instead she spent 3 hr's helping a young men she never met and probably will never meet again.

I did thank her about a 100 times.

There's good people around.

Maybe it was karma as i went to the same hospital the day before to donate blood, or maybe i just got lucky this lady was around.

Here's my face now.

Ended up not having to get stitches as the wound was very 'clean' and they used glue instead to get less unnesasairy scarring.

Got a lot of questions at work the next day. I work in a store so all the regular custumers very rather shocked to see my face.
Dk2OLFJ.jpg
Click to expand...

Great story. Hopefully you used the old, "Yeah, but you should see the other guy.l" response.
 
This isn't stories of my deeds by my current girlfriend. I have helped out people but her acts of kindness far exceeded mine.

We had got off the bus in south Station in boston. Waiting for a train back to my hometown. We nearly missed the bus and my knees were in excruciating pain for most of the day. She had went to get me some pizza as my knees were toast and literally couldn't walk any further. So i happily ate the pizza after she bought it for me.

We shorly noticed an awful smell, and noticed a man who looked out of place, lost, broken and very hungry. He was very clearly homeless and absolutely filthy, we had talked about it for a few minutes, and she is so kind, she couldnt just ignore that. She walked around the corner and offered to buy some food for him. I didnt see this as i couldnt really walk but she came back and a few minutes later i saw the man much happier with a large bag of food from Mcdonalds. She must have spent like 20 bucks on the poor guy. I wanted to do more, his clothes were threadbare and filthy. But i had just gotten back from a vacation. So unfortunately i couldnt get him atleast some jeans and a new shirt and sweathshirt like i wanted too.

Another time in her home town i was caught off gaurd by a homeless man, and was kinda guilted into getting him food. I didnt have cash but i offered to buy him something with my debt card. He was acting pretty shady, so i made sure to keep a very close eye on him. I was with my GF so i was extra cautious.
We got to the breakfast place ordered him 2 breakfast sandwiches and 2 drinks and he was very thankful. I had to read the menu to him as he said he couldnt see very well.


Long story short, my GFs tendencies rubbed off on me and i do more to help when i can.
 
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