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What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

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Re: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

#221

Post by oaiey »

neilv wrote: post #77
silisili wrote: post #8

I like this. I hope this thread fills with many more comments. I think it's important to remember especially in traffic and such that cars aren't cars, they are people. I have no idea the real ratios, but imagine 20% are genuinely good people, 60% are just going about their lives, and 20% are miserable for some reason and drive like miserable people. It's easy to think everyone else is an idiot and become aggressive,…

> I have no idea the real ratios, but imagine 20% are genuinely good people, 60% are just going about their lives, and 20% are miserable for some reason and drive like miserable people. Lately, this is my experience in general, not only cars. Though I want to say both that 20% and 60% are genuinely good, and that first 20% are readily above-and-beyond. In the big-name college town where I live, which still pretends t…

I believe the same: everyone wants to be in New York / Munich / pick your local fashionable place. Everyone moves there to be someone. But not everyone can be someone, so there are a lot of unhappy / selfish people.

Re: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

#223

Post by CamperBob2 »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #169
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #106

I've got a weird one from a bank. I was driving from South Carolina to Virginia, I was completely broke, and had exactly $20 in cash, and only a couple dollars in my checking account. I did my math wrong, and didn't have enough money for enough gas to make it home. I was trying to draft behind semi trucks and drive slow to conserve fuel, but it wasn't enough. I called my bank at the gas station with my needle on empt…

It's really striking the number times people have downvoted my story, considering it is 1) a true fact about my life, and 2) eminently relevant to the topic of the article. Even a thread about kindness can't stop the haters :)

Honestly, I suspect HN is starting to fuzz votes the way Reddit does. Some of the voting I've seen on my own comments lately makes zero sense, including weeks-old comments of perfectly neutral tone. It isn't worth worrying about.

Re: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

#224

Post by sfn42 »

The first thing that comes to mind is one time when I was pretty drunk, in my late teens, hurt my legs trying a very ambitious(stupid) jump and then passed out at a bus stop. Woke up later, no phone battery, in the city about an hour away from home and nobody else I knew around.

Limped into a 24hr kiosk and asked to borrow their phone to call for a ride. Got a no. Tried explaining the situation, no sympathy.

A guy who happened to be in there saw that I was really not having a great time, came over and just hugged me and said it was gonna be alright and let me use his phone. No idea who you are, wouldn't recognize you if I ever met you again, but thanks for that.

Re: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

#225

Post by circuit10 »

hermitcrab wrote: post #133

In the UK we used to have a nationalized rail system. People were always rude about the late trains, stale sandwiches etc. But I once managed to leave a bag Xmas present on a train. I only realized when I got another train. They were so helpful, they managed to find the bag and have it sent on to me. I think we lost a lot of that good will when the UK rail system was privatised. And the privatised trains were still l…

I've left my bag with my laptop in a station a year or two ago and went to lost property and they called me when they found it and I got in back in a day or so, I guess if they have a specific lost property office that's kind of their job but it's nice that no one tried to steal it or anything

Re: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

#227

Post by kyleblarson »

I was on a train from Miyajima to Hiroshima on a random weekday morning and an older gentleman sat next to me. I am a white American and I could tell he wanted to talk with me but was hesitant so I said good morning in my terrible Japanese. He wanted to practice English so we chatted and he ended up insisting on taking me to his local okonomiyaki spot in Hiroshima where he was clearly a regular. We had a 2.5 hour lunch and he hazed me with food beer and shochu and introduced me to the other octogenarian regulars. It was a really cool experience.

Re: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

#228

Post by agumonkey »

a homeless kid in a park

i got carried away reading, evening came .. i decided to leave, but that park was already closed and unlike most parks where i usually go, this one has absolutely no way out, they lock everything..

he noticed me, told me there's on spot where the fence is missing a bar, enough for a person to escape.. but not for my bike which means i'd have to leave it chained to a tree during the night.. not thrilled by that idea

that kid sat on the fence and help me lift the bike, grabbing the dirty wheel and everything. the bike was out, and i used the thin hole to get out.

felt crazy to me that this kid went that far to help a stranger

i went back there a few times with some money but didn't ran into him, until a month later our paths cross so i could thank him

Re: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

#229

Post by hermitcrab »

thunderfork wrote: post #211
hermitcrab wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of old men who die from doing no exercize is also quite high.

My grandfather was a farmer and scarcely went a day without hours of exercise in his life. He passed away after a heart attack while shoveling his paraplegic neighbor's driveway. You don't have to be unfit to get done in by shoveling snow.

It doesn't snow much where I live. Why is shovelling snow so deadly? Don't people stop for a rest when they get tired?

Re: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

#230

Post by sakopov »

About a decade ago I walked El Camino de Santiago. On the very last day I had to catch a bus from Santiago de Compostela to the local airport to get on the flight to Madrid and head back home. I remember standing with my backpack on some random street at 6AM not really knowing where the hell the bus stop is. A woman walked up to me and asked me something. I could see she seemed frustrated and couldn't really understand what she was saying. Then started telling her in my very non-existent Spanish that I'm trying to get to the airport. She immediately grabbed my hand and just dragged me through all of the traffic straight to the bus stop a couple of block away ignoring all traffic lights. Then showed me on her fingers how many minutes the bus will arrive and walked away. Forever grateful to this woman for helping me not miss my flight home. I've had a number of similar encounters with strangers while on this trail. Spaniards really appreciate anyone dedicating their time to be on the trail and a lot of them go out of their way to accommodate people either with a free stay, food, a ride to a grocery store and etc.
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