Niceness is Cool

So, I tend to often bitch and moan about how sucky we humans are to one another but I never really talk about the nice things I see people do from time-to-time. So, here's a post about nice things. Yesterday evening, I'm walking from my dayjob to the bus stop and this Latino dude walking in the opposite direction smiles at me and holds out a day pass for the bus. "Hey, do you need this?" He wasn't some freaky idiot or anything. He was a dude who recognized me from the bus--I didn't recognize him at all (even now, sadly), but I'm one of the only bleach-blond white guys that takes a bus in LA, so I can understand why he remembered me. Regardless of any of that, I was really struck by how this dude's natural instinct when he realized he no longer needed a day pass was to find someone else who might need one. I had to turn him down because I already have a monthly pass. However, it was still pretty cool of him to offer. OK, now I'd like to do some armchair cultural analyzation. This analyzation will be based solely on stereotypes since any Latinos I know are much more assimilated into "white" culture and this guy looked and sounded like he was just smuggled in. Though to be honest I have no idea if he was an illegal. All I know for sure is that he was real nice. But the assumption that jumped into my head was that he was pretty seriously Christian (as the Mexican stereotype suggests). It was Christianity that taught him that being nice to total strangers is good. Funny how white folks who are Christian aren't always that nice. It makes you wonder how different the two "colors" of Christianity are. Or perhaps the Mexican takes his religion more seriously than us white folks do. Just some random musings, I guess. Then, last night, I dashed out of my favorite Internet cafe to see (by total coincidence) TheWife's car passing directly in front of me and stopping at a light. She saw me, and after the light change, pulled over and picked me up. At the next light she handed one of those small, plastic shopping bags. "An early birthday present," she said. I looked inside the bag--there were two cans of [wiki: Haggis]!! I love Haggis and I had been talking about going to this British shoppe (their spelling, not mine!) in Santa Monica to pick some up. Turns out she was in SM yesterday so she decided to pick up a couple cans for us to have a special Scottish dinner tonight. Now, it wasn't just that people were nice to me, but I was nice to TheWife, too. I picked up a little anime-themed trading figure for her. So, three nice things in just one day, in just one person's life. If we could all just only do nice things for people (and ourselves) the world would be a much happier place. Sad, really...

---

Orignal From: Niceness is Cool