Helping others: you should try it! It can do you good!

Last month I got myself into an unpleasant situation: there’s a parking lot in front of my office building that’s closer to where I usually park, but it requires a pass to get in and out. Once in a while though, the gate is open in the morning, and so I sometimes sneak in there. With my usual luck, however, that one day when I left the gate was closed, and I couldn’t get out. While I hate doing things like that, I had to approach another car that was about to leave and beg for the driver’s pass. She did lend it to me, but it was so obvious she REALLY didn’t want to. I was really polite and explained the situation and thanked her profusely, but she only did it because I kinda cornered her.

This weekend M had a little surprise for me: he took us to New England for the weekend (a family-style Valentine’s, if you want to call it that). We stayed in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday, then crossed Lake Champlain on Sunday morning and slowly made our way back through the countryside in upstate New York. It wasn’t far from home, but still a really nice and welcome change of scenery (we had a picnic for lunch on Sunday, in February! How great is that!) Every time we go, we are struck by how different everything is: from the architecture, to the way to conduct business, the people's sheer friendliness, the "green" conscience, the slower pace and the apparent importance of family and quality of life.

Twice on Sunday, we witnessed random acts of kindness towards us from people who really didn’t have to bother. When we wanted to pay for the ferry ride, the man didn’t accept credit cards and we didn’t have any US currency. Well, he could have totally decided not to accept us on board, but instead he went out of his way to accommodate us, calling people, checking his logbooks, and accepting my Canadian currency at a favorable rate while even giving me back some change. It wasn’t business as usual, since he told me that he hadn’t done it in years. He was smiling and helpful and thankful all the way.

Then, we stopped at a gas station in Plattsburgh to ask where the newly open Target store was (Target an hour away from home!!!! Yippee!). And this guy buying a newspaper told me he was going in that direction, and that we could simply follow him if we wanted. So we did, and he took us right into the parking lot, making sure we were OK before going on his way.

I was still reflecting on all this gratuitous niceness this morning when I ran into that woman from the office parking lot. I was going to smile at her sheepishly and maybe tell her again how grateful I was that she helped me that day, but she didn’t give me a chance. As soon as she saw me, her face became all awkward and she bolted, in order to make sure I wouldn’t try talking to her. She practically jumped into the elevator and probably pressed that button freakishly until phew, it became clear that I wouldn’t try to catch her, she was safe.

Geez, thanks lady. I always take the stairs by the way.