Kindness Response

Thanks to the brilliance of my friend Andrea Cash I went out of my way to do a few random acts of kindness today in response to her Kindness Blitz to “make America Kind again.” As Carter went off to school I told her what I was planning. She said, “Yes, please do that, but not just for the blog.” It might have been kinder of her to think that I do things to actual be good and not to just blog about them. Nonetheless the whole point of the Kindness Blitz was to not only be kinder, but to share your kindness in the hopes that it inspires others to be kinder.
I had to stay home most of the day so I could be kind to the people who I was feeding today. I don’t feel like being kind to people I already know and love is moving the kindness needle. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do in a limited amount of time. I decided that I wanted to show love to those people for whom today might be the scariest. So I went up to La Superior, the Mexican grocery store where they make fresh tortillas.  
My plan was to pay for people’s tortillas and baked goods that they had on their trays to purchase. Since I don’t speak Spanish it was interesting to see how I was going to handle this. I shop every so often at la Superior, but am still considered an outsider there.  
I went to the tortilla line and ordered a pound of tortilla’s which they wrapped for me. Then I waited for two other people behind me to do the same. I went to the cash register just in front of them and paid for mine and said to the clerk I want to pay for the people behind me. She rang the first person up and I handed over the money to the clerk. It totally confused the woman. I looked at her and said, “it’s on me.” Not a phrase she understood. The clerk said something in Spanish and the woman fanned herself and bowed her head in thanks.
We repeated this with the family behind her, but the young boy of the family spoke English and asked me why I was doing this. I did not want to make a big fuss, but just said it was a day to be nice to people. He smiled a big smile.  
By this time there was another person waiting so I went ahead and treated her to her baked goods. She did something that I think was a blessing on me. I just wanted people to have something happen to them that made them happy and know that the country is not going to hell.
I did a few other minor kindnesses on my way home, like stopping the line of cars so two young men could cross the road and letting a mother with two kids go in front of me at the gas station. Nothing big, but kinder than I usually am. I am going to try and keep this going and do at least two random acts of kindness everyday. I can’t be buying everyone’s tortillas everyday, but I can easily hold doors, or leave notes thanking someone.