She was in the parking lot with a cart full of bags to be loaded in her car. Her purse was in the child's seat area and the cart was behind the car with the trunk opened. She loaded the bags, two by two and the thief timed his walk through the parking lot so that she was turned away, loading bags into the trunk as he passed the cart.
He nonchalantly reached in and calmly took the purse and kept walking. She didn't even know what had transpired until she finished with the last bag and went for her purse. It was gone.
This created a huge mess for my friend. You know the drill. Call all the credit card companies, alert banks, feel violated and lose trust in mankind. Yeah, that kind of thing. But there was one item in her purse that can never be replaced. It was a memento that she has carried for the past 40 years or so.
I came upon the thought that this one person's bad action has caused a huge negative ripple in the karmasphere. Yes, it's true. And I decided to counteract that negative stuff by committing to doing 10 random acts of kindness before Christmas. These random acts of kindness must be done for strangers, not for anyone I know personally. Ten of these acts will possibly negate the one act of thievery.
Yesterday I had my first chance at kindness. I left the house to run an errand and noticed two cable technicians working on one of those switching boxes at the end of our street. It was very cold and in order to properly work on the cables, they were bare-handed. Yikes!
On my way back from the errand (only 10 minutes) I stopped at McDonalds and got two large cups of coffee. I was excited. A random act of kindness was in the works. I could complete one within minutes.
As I approached our road the unthinkable happened. No trucks. No technicians. They had finished their job and moved on.
Uhhhhhh...... FAIL.
Not only fail - it was a fail leaving two large cups of high octane coffee to be consumed. And so, I did, and spent the evening hopped up on caffeine and sewing like a madwoman.
Today's another day. If you're in northern Illinois take heed. I might just be kind to you today.
