Random Acts of Kindness

You know when you spontaneously show a child or anyone for that matter, love through a kind gesture, they never forget it. Case in point, the balloon lady in the neighborhood grocery store; now don’t think the supermarket actually has a balloon lady. To the contrary, the balloon lady is just a regular employee of the store that saw my children ogling the balloons she was filling with helium one day and gave them one each. I guess she must have noticed the squeals of delight, the transfixed gazes and the salivating mouths and decided to be nice but little did she know that such a simple gesture on her part translated into a magnanimous act of wonderment in the eyes of two little ones.
They have never forgotten her and whenever we go shopping the first thing they do is to look out for the balloon lady to give her a smile.

Then there is Miss M, our favorite crossing guard. She is never without a smile or a hug or a lollipop for the girls whenever we pass by. I cannot help but believe that these people of the community, in their small ways are teaching my children an important lesson regarding the glee to be derived from unplanned, no strings attached benevolence.

Remembering that, I was not surprised when on a recent visit to the Jamaican store, I witnessed the girls putting what they had observed into action. Before they went, they each were given a coin as a good behavior reward to spend as they liked. But after they deposited their coins in the gumball machine, they noticed that another child was pleading with his parent for a coin to partake in the bliss the girls were enjoying but to no avail. They then came to me and asked for another coin to give their friend candy too. This presented me with a bit of a challenge, suppose the parent did not want the child to have candy, what message would I be sending to them if I unmercilessly squashed their initiative seemedly without a second thought?

I decided to let the act take its course reasoning that whatever the outcome, the girls would learn some invaluable lesson about human nature, regardless of the turn of events. Thankfully, the other child was allowed to accept their generosity and they went skipping out of the store filled with self-pride and glowing in self worth....whew! Next lesson :- how to harness the power in wind turbines as efficient providers of electricity…LOL!