Mikey's Kindness Booklet

--by keymaker, posted Nov 18, 2006

For their first baby-shower, my cousin and her husband created a very unique kindness theme for everyone to partake in. To support their heartfelt intention, my wife and I decided to surprise them with a booklet that contained many of our favorite stories from the HelpOthers.org site. The compassion conspiracy, as we soon learned, went way above and beyond our expectations.

On Saturday, Michael was running the night shift at the 24-hour Kinkos and flat out said that they won't be able to get the project done that night. We nodded but still carried on with our part of bargain -- photocopying, sorting, printing. Four hours (and many adventures) later, Michael had become Mikey, he knew about deep interest in kindness and we knew about his dream of hittin' it big as a hip-hop DJ. By midnight, our homie says to us: "Alright, I will bind all these for you but you have to pick it up by 6AM before I sign off, so I don't get in trouble for sneaking this job in the queue." Rock on.

Instead of being tired, both my wife and I are surprisingly refreshed by the end of this day.

Sunday morning, 5:55AM, my droopy-eyed, unshaved self walks into the same Kinkos. Same old African-American, mild-mannered, hip-hoppin' Michael is there. "What's up, bro? You awake?" he asks. "Not really," I respond while handing him my credit card.

Oddly enough, his credit card reader gets jammed and in one wild swoosh of compassion, he says that this one is on the house. ("Just know that you got the better end of this deal," he adds with a wry smile.

What?!? A hopeful-DJ at a random Kinkos tags me with $120 worth of charges?

But his smile said it all. As hard as it was to believe, this was his expression of being part of this project, this vibration of virtue perhaps. (And I like to believe that at 3AM, bored between jobs, perhaps he read one or two or the stories. :))

So I dedicate this project to a friend I didn't know I had -- Mikey's Kindness Booklet.

7252 Reads

Posted by keymaker
Nov 18, 2006
Comments (17)

Readers Comments

Tom wrote: That's a great story. I just hope that Mikey wasn't stealing from Kinkos and instead just relying on his employee benefits that he's rightly entitled to!

Akku wrote: Thanks for your beautiful stories. It's great!

jawad wrote: Hi i really like ur this story.. thankx

tguyton wrote: What a great story! I took the time to read through the booklet and was especially touched by the story about the girl using her money from her grandparents to buy the Pokemon toy for the little boy.

stakhan wrote: thanks for your beautiful story.Its great!

paganmum wrote: Ha! Awesome!

sweetp wrote: Did you drop off a copy for Mikey? Thanks for sharing!!

brunen wrote: Those are the amazing moments we live for, aren't they? When others catch the kindness bug. :)

hotcocoa wrote: I think it's great from his part to pay it for oyu and great form oyur part to dedicate it to him :)
Happy day and if you see mikey again tell him i say thanks :) from the community.

Thank you for sharing the story and the book. I'm realyl grateful for that.

smiletoday wrote: Thanks for sharing. Great story!

Hope mikey got a copy! :)

Pages

Add A Comment

Name

Comment Description

Spam Block: Please answer this simple math question 5 + 3 =

Stories of Kindness from Around the World