The kindest thing anyone's ever done for you?

That's so awesome!

 

10 months into my first job, I was doing a lot of traveling home on my off days to see my friends, then girlfriend and my aunt, who was dying of cancer at the time.
After a particularly bad spell - where I was told it might not be much longer - I decided to take a couple days off of work and made the drive from PA to RI, spent some time with my aunt, then got ready to drive back to PA so I could cover my football game that night.
Maybe an hour into my drive on 95-South - at about 11 a.m. -, a guy in the right lane swerves into me on the left. Trying to avoid an accident, I honk my horn. Hyundai Accent's horns aren't loud, so I swerve left to avoid contact, lose control of my car and smash into the jersey barrier on the left, cross over the two lanes into another barrier on the right, then back over two lanes and my car plants into the barrier. I'm OK, get out of the car assess the damage. Call a cousin to come pick me up. As I'm waiting, state cop comes up and says "somebody saw the guy cut you off. He followed him and called in the plates. We got him now." I was ecstatic, because I knew I'd get some sort of insurance settlement.
However, I knew this wasn't going to pay for my car, but for two weeks, I'm driving a new truck as I figure out what I'm going to do for wheels. I go to visit my aunt - who passed about one month later - and she's talking about my accident and must have had an angel on my shoulders to have gotten in such a bad accident and been OK. She's asking me about what I'm doing about a car and I tell her I'm still looking, and then she says "well, your cousin is going to college next fall so we were going to get her a car then, but maybe now we'll speed up the process. You can have hers."
I was floored. I was making next-to-nothing, wouldn't be able to afford a decent car, and suddenly I was getting a four-year old car with like no miles on it for free (I had to pay state taxes on it).
My aunt was a great person. For her to be thinking of me and saying how blessed I was when she was in the condition she was in is something I'll never forget.
I'm hoping someone I know will need some sort of transportation and I can pass my car over to them. Even on 180K miles, she's running pretty damn good.

 

Liesl: That makes my heart warm hearing your story. Thank you.

Rhody: God acts in special ways, huh? Good for you.

I love this thread.

 

Rhody steps up with another awesome story. Thanks!

 

You think that's an awesome story? Ask him about his bachelor party.

 

As someone who wasn't even allowed to walk with his high school graduating class because he was a fine arts half credit short, your story warms my heart like little else. I can only imagine the pride your brother still feels to this day.

 

This probably won't be that great to some, but it meant a lot to me. Last week, found out I didn't have enough priority points built up to get a ticket through TCU to the Super Regional in Austin. So me and a buddy are searching Craigslist and other sites for tickets.

Posted on the TCU sports message board that like most people on the board, I didn't have the pull to get tickets in the TCU section.

Get to work on Wednesday and have a private message from an older TCU alum offered me two all-session tickets. I call and ask how much, willing to pay probably three times the face value. He say 30 bucks each (the cost through TCU) plus pay the five dollar handling fee.

I thought that was a really nice gesture of a guy who didn't even know me. Come to find out he played for TCU when I my father was covering the Horned Frogs back in the old days.

 

This is the best thing someone has done for me in the sports writing world. When I was younger, I wrote a letter (a paper letter, amazingly) to a local columnist, asking for advice through the email. I didn't mention my phone number, but he somehow found it and called me back. I was out of the house twice when he called, but he continued to call back. When I finally got in touch with him, we talked for a half-hour, and he jump-started my interest in sports writing. I can't thank him enough, even to this day.

 

The guy didn't talk you out of becoming a sports writer? I think that would qualify more for the worst thing someone else has done to you

Kidding.

A sports writer did the same for me, when I was 17. He wrote me a nice long letter about what it took to get into the business, and then he came and sat with me and my parents at a game for about 20 minutes and talked to me.

Damn him! I coulda been a doctor!

 

My friend hooked me up with my job. If it wasn't for him, I'd probably have gone broke and had to move home. I would have never experienced the Strasburg debut without him, by proxy.

 

Not the kindest thing, by a long shot, but a damned cool thing that I badly needed.

Going through another bout of depression -- long story short -- so I've been pretty down lately.

My best friend goes to the local comic book shop and sees a box of cards under a table out of the way. They turn out to be baseball cards.

The shop hadn't sold sports cards in several years. The guy had no idea they were down there. He asked my friend if he would like to have them and my friend told him, "No, but I know someone who would."

Nothing fancy, mind you. It was the thought that counted.

Damn near made my eyes well up.

 

This wasn't for me, but it was one of the most overwhelming moments of my life.

My friend and I started hanging out with a new co-worker, who is in a volenteer fire department with my father. Dad was recently diagnosed with cancer and in the hospital, so he couldn't attend the banquet. Dr. J and I met up with my friend, co-worker and his date in his place.

Dad dictated a thank you card before the banquet and it came in handy. About 30 minutes before dinner, the chief (who stepped down because his wife was almost killed in a car accident a few months ago) informs me that my dad was to receive his 50-year award that night. Fifty freaking years. I had a feeling he'd get something, but now I had to prepare myself for a speech.

No one at the dinner, which included representatives from the entire county, had given a 50-year award before. So when I got up, I read the card (whch ended with "watch out from my daughter -- no kidding). I was crying a little bit at the beginning but made it through and gave my speech at the end. They gave my father a (lengthy) standing ovation and I've never been prouder.

A little later, when they were honoring the chief's wife -- also a volenteer -- no one was there to comfort her as her family was giving out all the awards, I was sitting close enough to keep giving her hugs while she cried. When the chief called dad, dad couldn't be prouder.

I've always looked down on the fact that I came from a small town like that, but when those people stood up for my father, I cried like a baby.



Oh, and once after I had an awful day at work, I came home and Dr. J had drawn a hot bath for me -- complete with chocolates, sparkling grape juice (I had to work early the next day) and a gossip magazine. Heaven.