Friday, September 03, 2004

One Kind Soul's Random Acts

Today's Toronto Star includes a heartwarming story about a woman who buys coffee for the folks in the car behind her at the coffee shop drive-through. It's a Random Act of Kindness, and it's the kind of thing that makes you wonder why more people can't be sweeter on a smaller, day-to-day scale.

For more info on RAKE, visit the web site for the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. You'll find it inspirational. Or, if you're like Dieter, the teutonic, self-centred moron-character I'm building in my novel, you'll wonder why you didn't just buy one for yourself.

By the way, for those of you not lucky enough to live in the overgrown country camp known as Canada, Tim Hortons is more than a huge chain of coffee shops. To some Canadians, it represents a form of java-fuelled religion. Scary in a way, but comforting when my wife and I are carting the kids yet again on the long road between London and Montreal.

But stay away from Tim Horton's in Quebec. Either the water there is substandard, or separatist minimum-wage-earners don't know how to make coffee. Either way, it's horrid there. Avoid at all costs - unless you're buying it for the person in the car behind you, of course.

1 comment:

carmilevy said...

I often lump the concept of Random Acts of Kindness into the same bucket as Pay It Forward. In the latter case, if someone does something nice to you, instead of paying that person back, you simply do something similarly nice for someone else at a future point in time. I'd like to think that, combined, these things can kind of snowball until the world is a shinier, happier place.

I know I'm a limitless idealist. But someone's gotta carry the flag, right?