Commentary
Ordinary acts of kindness
By Linda Tagawa
You never know when an opportunity may arise that propels you to instinctively make a choice to get involved. It happened to my friend Gerry the day her gas gauge hit empty.
"Rats!" she grumbled and pulled into the nearest gas station. An old pickup truck with mangled, chopped tree limbs piled high in the back, was parked in front. She hopped out and dashed up to the booth. A young man dressed in a stained T-shirt and grubby jeans stood ahead of her with a handful of coins.
"That must be his truck ahead of my car. Looks like he's put in a long, hard day at work. Bet he'll be glad to get home, au au (bathe) and grind on a hot cooked meal," she thought, noticing his calloused, stubby fingers counting...
"75, 85, 95 cents ..." He stopped, reached deep into his pocket, dug our his last nickel and smiled, "Uh, das it, three bucks' worth!" He looked up at the stocky woman who was bobbing her head as he counted. She punched the total on her register and handed him the receipt.
"Three bucks! Cheeze, how far can a person drive with three bucks worth of gas?" thought Gerry. "Definitely, there won't be any stops along the way for him today!"
He was lifting the nozzle when Gerry walked out to her pump and, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, she was moved to do something. She stuck her head into the car window, dug into her handbag, then ran over to the suntanned young man and handed him a $5 bill.
"'Scuse me, I want you to have this for your gas," she blurted.
His mouth dropped in surprise. "Oh! No! No!" He put up both hands and shook his head. "No worry! I get money. I jus wen leave my wallet at home!"
Gerry took his hand and shoved the bill into his rough, gritty palm. "For you! Take it! I want you to have it!"
She turned back to her car when suddenly she heard, "Miss, I don't know if you like mango, but I like give you dis."
She spun and saw him standing with a huge, perfectly ripened, golden-orange Hayden mango, just right for eating.
"Oh!" she gasped. She had never seen one quite so perfect.
"Nice, yeah?" His sunburnt cheeks crinkled at the corners of his eyes as he smiled. Then, in an instant, the young man was gone.
Gerry drove straight to her mom's and walked inside holding the luscious fruit.
"Ooo! Wea you got dat?"
"Somebody gave me. Here!" She carefully put the sweet, luscious fruit into her mom's cupped palms.
"Ho, so beeg yeah? Nice color, nice shape too!" her mom said, shuffling over to the butsudan (Japanese altar). She placed it in a dish, stepped back and bowed her head low, deep in her own prayer.
That little bit of kindness, generated from one person, touched the heart of a young man. It was given back to Gerry, who in turn, shared it with her mom for the ancestral altar.
Who knows if there were others that bit of kindness may have touched that day? Who knows how far it traveled, inspiring others to reach out and pass on that little bit of kindness?
Linda Tagawa is a teacher and mother of four grown children. Her column appears here monthly.
