Open Doors

One winter night during my first year of undergrad, I began to walk home from the shopping center, exasperated with the wind and cold and a few petty things that had happened while I was out.

The last utter annoyance was the way cars had twice barreled through the crosswalk just ahead of me, despite my usually successful New Yorker's "Pedestrian's Rights" mentality. I didn't so much as feel validated in my aggravation, muttering to myself with my scarf wrapped around my mouth, as I just savored the warmth of my breath remaining around my covered lips, but venting still felt good.

As I passed the bus stop, a bus picked up the one waiting passenger and left. Immediately, another bus pulled up to me and the doors opened. I explained to the driver that I wasn't waiting for the bus, but he asked if I was headed for the college and offered me a free ride. I hadn't planned on it, I didn't mean to wait for it, but there it was.

I gave him the Are-You-For-Real eyebrow, but, feeling calm and reassured, found my feet climbing the steps. He said he was going in that direction anyway, so we would both get where we needed to go and I could avoid the cold.

When I thanked him, he told me, "Don't thank me. Thank Him," and pointed above him. "He's given me so much," he said. "It's good to pass it on."

Without my prompting, he drove past the main entrance to the college and stopped at the bottom of the hill at the half-hidden entrance near the dining hall. I went straight to dinner and never enjoyed a bowl of campus soup more than I did that night.

I called my mother since she had recently had a number of similar experiences - random acts of kindness - in the midst of her father's illness, and I almost cried as I told her.

It's the same feeling as receiving a visit or a note from a friend, or sharing a mutual embrace, or seeing a student I've never met smile at me in passing and wondering if they've confused me with someone they do know or if they just felt like smiling. It's cheesy or corny or whatever cynicism and too-coolness makes us think about it, but it's the kind of thing that lifts us before we hit bottom.

Good things come back to us. They even come to us when we aren't sure that we deserve them. Look for them and you'll see.


Some of you may remember this story from January 2007, years before AmenAbility was even a twinkle in my eye, but I wanted to tell it again. I will also refer back to it in an upcoming post and decided that this was simplest.