Humans are often good at doing things for strangers. Regardless of the motivation, I am thankful for small kindnesses.

Today, standing in line, a rather long, extensive line at the US Post Office – quarterly taxes are due today AND it was a holiday yesterday, so it was really like Monday – a complete stranger paid for my postage.

He had a stack-full of envelopes, loading each one individually at the APC with the proper postage. The counter staff probably wouldn’t have been very excited about him standing in their line only to tie up a full position. They would not have wanted to go through the stack, item by item, weighing, calculating, stamping and labeling. So he chose to use the self service kiosk.  While I waited, he was kind enough to let me know that he would be “quite a while” and would I like to jump in and obtain my postage before he finished.

I said, “Wow, that would be great. I only need two one-cent stamps.” (Make up postage for my out of date but really cute holiday themed jack-o-lanterns.)  He was surprised that the USPS actually still used such a small denomination stamp and promptly purchased them for me. Furthermore, he wouldn’t even take a nickel for them, let alone the dollar I offered to him. So, today, after thinking of all of the wonderful things that people did in volunteering for MLK Day of Service, I am just (still) so very thankful for small kindnesses performed by strangers.

~ Dawn aka Hat Girl