Friday, September 27, 2013

Acts of Kindness the Third

Today it’s my pleasure to post the third installment in the Acts of Kindness series.

In July I received a phone call from a woman who had found my son’s wallet and wanted to be sure we got it back intact. After posting about it on FB, people started telling me their own stories of acts of kindness they’ve experienced. I knew these stories needed to be told. So I asked for submissions and got so many I had to break them out into three separate posts. This is the third one. If you missed the first one, it’s here: Acts of Kindness Series. If you missed the second one, it’s here: Acts of Kindness Too.

Acts of Kindness | graphic designed by and property of www.BakingInATornado.com | #MyGraphics

Here are more of the stories submitted to me. Again, in their own words:

~While traveling into the “city” with my husband to do some shopping, I had to stop to get gas. When we were pulling out of the gas station onto a busy 4 lane highway, my hubby noticed something in the middle of the road.
“Pull over, pull over” he says. “That was someone’s wallet”.
I finally got pulled over and turned around. Hubby runs out into the highway to retrieve the wallet and as much of the contents as possible. It was a very full wallet with many credit cards, over $300 cash, business cards and such. We decided not to take the wallet back to the gas station as you just never know and tried to get it to the local police station. Now we live in a very rural area right by the state line and police stations are not open “after hours” in the winter. We drove around this very small, wooded community tucked along the shores of Lake Michigan for 20 minutes trying to find the police station only to find it closed with no emergency number. We decided to continue onto our shopping trip and try to find the owner when we returned home as the address for the owner was a town that is more than 40 miles away.
Upon returning home I looked up the owner in the phone book and tried every number possible with no luck. The number that was for the wallet’s owner had been disconnected. After doing more research and making more calls we finally found a number that “could” have been the owner. After more than an hour trying to get an answer I finally got “Jane” on the phone and told her that I had found something that might belong to her.
“You found my dog? Where is my dog?”
“No I don’t have your dog but I have something else that might belong to you.”
“Can I call you back later? I really need to find my dog.”
Now this was a bizarre conversation but I understand the love of a pet so I gave her my number and left it in her hands. The next day she finally called back. When I told her that I had her wallet she didn’t believe me and didn’t even know she had lost it. I gave her my address and arranged a time to meet. The meeting day and time was 2 days away! i felt uncomfortable with that but she told me that anyone who had gone through what we went through to find her had to be honest people and she felt comfortable leaving her wallet in our care. When she finally showed up to get her wallet she told us that she found her dog and that she had just moved out of state so she didn’t know how we had found her. Lucky for her she had written her cell number down and placed it inside her wallet. She insisted on giving hubby a $40 reward which he tried hard not to take but she was adamant. “Jane” had only been gone about 2 minutes when she pulled back in the driveway and gave hubby another $40 as she said she didn’t think that the first amount that she gave him was enough!
Boy that $80 sure did make a nice donation to our local food pantry!
Carey James, Michigan

Choco-Berry Layer Bars | recipe developed by www.BakingInATornado.com | #recipe #dessert




going into the oven
Choco-Berry Layer Bars
out of the oven, still warm

Choco-Berry Layer Bars | recipe developed by www.BakingInATornado.com | #recipe #dessert

~Many years ago, when my son was just under a year old, I was traveling with him to visit my parents. My husband stayed behind to work.
We were on a plane waiting to take off and we were delayed. Eventually we were told that we had to change planes and because we had pulled away from the gate we’d have to go down stairs from the plane, walk into the terminal and up more stairs to a new gate. I had the baby, a diaper bag, a backpack and a small stroller that fit into the overhead compartment. There was no way I could get it all off of the plane. The pilot, copilot and stewardesses all watched me struggle and never did a thing to help. One passenger came over and took the stroller. Another took my backpack and a third took my diaper bag. I walked down the stairs carrying the baby. The passenger with the stroller had it set up at the bottom of the stairs. All those passengers walked with me to the terminal, collapsed the stroller and took it up the stairs, set it up again and walked me to the gate. I didn’t know what to say to them all. “Thank you” didn’t seem like enough but it was all I had.
Bethryn, Massachusetts

~When my son was little he loved the show Blue’s Clues. At one point, Subway was giving out Blue’s Clues toys with a kids’ sandwich. We went almost every day trying to get one of each of the toys. There was one toy he hadn’t gotten, the notebook, and the day we went in hoping to get it the promotion had ended. My little boy was heartbroken.
A young girl who worked there said that she had one at home and if we came back the next day she’d let us have it. I offered to pay her but she refused. I went out to a store and put together a gift bag and went back the next day. She had remembered and handed my son the notebook. You should have seen the smile on his face. I had him hand her the gift bag. She rewarded him with a big smile as well.
Camryn Jas


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Choco-Berry Layer Bars
                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com
                                                                                                                                         

 
Prinable Recipe
 
Ingredients:
3/4 stick (6 TBSP) butter or margarine, melted
½ of a 11.5 oz pkg Keebler Fudge Stripes Dark Chocolate cookies
1 cup chocolate chips
¾ cup white chocolate chips
8 Strawberry Marshmallows, each cut or broken into 8 pieces
1 cup of Raspberry baking chips or of coarsely chopped Wilton  Dark Cocoa Raspberry Candy Melts
1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk
 
Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
*Grease a 9 X 13 baking dish.
*Process the cookies in a food processor until they are fine crumbs.    
*Mix the cookies crumbs and the butter or margarine and pat firmly into the bottom of your baking dish.
*Sprinkle with the chocolate chips, then the white chocolate chips, then the Marshmallow pieces, and finally the raspberry baking chips or candy melts.
*Cover with Sweetened Condensed Milk.
*Bake for 25 minutes.
*Remove from oven. Cool for 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges. Allow to cool completely at room temperature before cutting into squares. Remove from pan. Store in the fridge. Bring to room temperature for serving.        

22 comments:

  1. That wallet story is incredible!! I can't believe what lengths she went through to make sure "Jane" got everything back. Restores your faith in humanity, doesn't it?

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    Replies
    1. It really does. All of the stories sent to me made me smile.

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  2. See ... there is some amazingness in the world. Yep ... totally just made up a word.

    ¤´¨)
    ¸.•*´
    (¸¤ Lanaya | xoxo
    Raising-Reagan.com

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  3. It's always good to hear really nice stories like that especially when we constantly hear the bad all the time. I hope that one day if I should lose a special item that someone would take the time and effort to get it back to me.
    The other day I found a mobile phone on the floor and tried to give it back to it's owner by ringing the last number on the phone, stating where we had found it etc. Would you believe that the woman owner tried to imply that I was the one who had stolen her phone or why would I have it? After a few more calls, I was so mad with her I wanted to throw the mobile into the River Thames but in anger, I took it to the police station explained what happened and eventually she collected her phone. The police later rang us later to say how sorry she was for falsely accusing us and was grateful to get her latest state of the art expensive mobile phone back. She's lucky I put up with all that rubbish from her, or the mobile would be swimming with the fishes right now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How sad that people are so jaded that they can't even trust someone trying to do the right thing. The hard time she gave you is a reflection of her character. The lengths you went to do the right thing is a reflection of yours.

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  4. Great stories. I have several of my own. These touched my heart and made me cry.
    Too bad we can't all be like this everyday.

    Now that recipe is a pure sugar coma waiting to happen and I think I need it. LOL

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    Replies
    1. I've loved all of these stories, and I've really appreciated that people took the time to share them.

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  5. Hey Yo: I always love that you share these stories. Very cool. And in some small way, these stories played a part in inspiring me recently:

    While driving thru a local burger joint for lunch a few weeks ago, I told the cashier to put the tab of the car behind me on my tab. While very small "on the scale of things," I say this only to share how good it felt to do it. I drove off with a smile.

    Thanks... Always enjoy, Slu

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    Replies
    1. It really does feel good to do things for others. I think we forget because we just don't do it enough. Good for you, I'm glad you did and I'm glad it made you smile.

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  6. I love stories like these. They really restore our faith in humanity.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree. And I do think that every now and then we do need to just stop and have our faith in humanity restored.

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  7. These are such great stories, I love hearing them. Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I enjoyed collecting them. They really needed to be shared.

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  8. I don't know which was better, the stories or the recipe! There are so many good people out there - it's just that we hear about the bad minority more. You've taken a step to change that with this post, Karen!
    And as for that recipe...even though it seems like sacrilege to demolish a perfectly good Keebler cookie, in this case it's for a very good cause. I'm sugared out right now and they STILL sound amazing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love hearing about the good people out there. And I was so lucky that my son's wallet was found by one of them.

      Don't look at it as if the cookie was demolished, it was just reincarnated.

      Delete
  9. Those are really sweet stories!
    Ticks me off about the airline personnel not helping Bethryn.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I agree. But I think it's great that the passengers stepped up to help.

      Delete
  10. Faith in mankind restored! There are definitely still good people in the world. I would never keep a wallet or phone that I found, and in fact did return both of them to the police when I did find both on seperate occasions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's good to know there are still people with morals and values and a conscience in this world. And we're lucky that my son's wallet was found by one of them.

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  11. Reading these stories should be required to anyone who also watches the nightly news. We could all have our faith restored. Keep these coming. I'm smiling....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Slu actually did a really great post about his actions in response to having read these Acts of Kindness posts. Check it out when you get a chance.

      Delete

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