Here’s mine - story about a woman who is now my brother’s ex.
Ten+ years ago my brother was climbing with three other guys in Montana. A rock chunk broke off* and hit and killed one of my brother’s friends (I’ll call him K.). My brother and the two other climbers literally carried K’s body out of the backcountry until they met up with the EMTs.
My brother needed some support after the funeral/formal grieving was done, and his GF called me and asked if I could come for a bit, which of course I did. It was around the end of the month; the GF and I were talking and it came out that every time there was a K-related social thing at a bar in the days they were all together after K’s death, the GF had picked up the bar tab. “I didn’t want his wife to get stuck with it and I didn’t trust any of the guys to think of that,” she said.
I was floored. That was an incredibly kind, and classy, thing to do.
What’s something classy you’ve seen someone do?
*A note, for the record - it was one of those freak things. My brother and I grew up climbing; he was a professional guide for several summers; at that point he’d been up El Cap a couple of times. The rock had no sign that it was unsafe. Sometimes horrible things happen.
My father lives along a highway. One day he noticed a pickup truck had pulled off and the guy was looking at a tire. It turns out that the guy had a flat and didn’t have a spare. It was an old truck and the guy had just moved back to town and didn’t have any money. The guy called his sister to pick him up and told my dad that he’d try to find another tire and come back to pick up the truck.
After he left, my dad pulled the tire and took it to a nearby tire shop and bought the guy a used tire that still had plenty of wear left on it. He brought it back and put it on the truck. When the guy returned, he saw what my dad had done and started crying. He had had a bad run of luck and was touched that a stranger would do something so nice for him.
Okay, I hate to talk nice about my mother-in-law. lol. About a month ago one of my wife’s members/patients had to take her daughter to Shand’s in Gainesville FL because her daughter was having pretty severe medical issues. The mother was somewhat religious, and my MIL is too - so my wife told my MIL about her.
She drove the 50 minutes to Shands several different times to spend time with the mom and daughter. She brought her food, and bought some coloring books for her daughter. She showed a lot of kindness to this woman and her daughter.
My daughter was born super early (11 weeks early and weighed a bit over 2 lbs). Then she had to spend 60 days in the hospital in the NICU. Throughout the whole process a former student of mine who was then a NICU nurse (but not OUR nurse) would daily kind of check in on my wife and I, probably recognizing we were tired, terrified, and just kind of in a fog. She was always there with a kind and reassuring word (which meant the WORLD to me during a time that it was hard not to think of bad outcomes), and then bought my daughter a nice gift of a onesie with snaps (you needed snaps because all the wires connected to my baby daughter did not work with zippers). Just a super kind bunch of acts that I will not soon forget.
Awesome story, thanks for sharing. I’m loving this thread, hope it gains traction.
While I don’t have the deeply personal and emotional stories like hospital mercy, I’ll give a shout out to my old man for helping the neighbors with snow removal. I’ve also seen in neighborhoods in Spokane where neighbors help neighbors with it. That’s classy to not expect or accept payment.
This is me. It’s hit or miss on a yearly basis how much snow we get here in East Central IL. The first 2 winters we lived in our current house we got very little snow, so shoveling was easy. This last winter we actually had a couple of good snow falls. About a year ago my BIL gave me a 28” snow blower that he didn’t use because they have a skid steer. It was not uncommon for me to do all 2/10 of a mile of sidewalk and between 4-6 driveways beyond my own depending on how much snow we got. My Dad did the same in our old neighborhood until he had both hips and both knees replaced.
My wife got run over by a jeep while leaving the gym resulting in a broken hip on one side and a broken tibula on the other side.
The best treatment option was 45 minutes away so I mostly spent the nights there with her. Came home after a couple of days to check on the house and get fresh clothes to find out a buddy of mine had built a ramp so when she got home we would be able to get in the house in her wheelchair.