On stopping a stranger to remove the toilet paper stuck to her shoe

     It was Valentine’s Day and Rick and I had gone out to dinner at a neighborhood place, where we settled in for some good food and celebration. As I usually do in a restaurant, I looked around to check out our “neighbors” and noticed a couple in my direct vision clearly enjoying their meal.

     At one point, the woman of the pair got up to go to the restroom and when she returned I couldn’t help noticing that she was dragging about a foot of toilet paper that had stuck to her shoe.

     “Maybe I should go over and tell her or pull it off for her,” I said.

     “You’re just trying to do something you’ve never done before so you can blog about it,” Rick accused.

     So I didn’t go over, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing to walk out of a crowded restaurant with a foot of toilet paper stuck to your shoe? Wouldn’t I want someone to tell me if I were in that situation?

     I held off, but when the couple got up to leave and walked past us, I could restrain myself no longer.

     “Excuse me,” I said to the woman, “let me help you.” Then I bent over and tore off the toilet paper with my napkin.

     “Thank you,” she said, with a glimmer in her eye.

     And that was that.

     But I couldn’t help thinking about other situations where strangers have stopped to perform little acts of charity. I have been the beneficiary of many – and they were much larger than simply removing paper from a shoe.

     Once – long before cell phones – when my car broke down on my way home from work on busy Route 3 in Nashua, N.H., a woman stopped and stayed with me until my auto club arrived. I asked if I could repay her in some way. “No,” she said. “Just pass it on.”

     And the next time I saw a broken-down motorist, I did.

     I love the Valentine’s Day anecdote on my “Random Acts of Kindness” calendar, about a woman who was working on a project that would keep her up most of the night and who went out for a bowl of soup and sat at the bar of a restaurant. Sitting there, she noticed a lonely-looking man who was trying to make conversation with the distracted bartender, to no avail. Not wanting to prolong her project but feeling sorry for the man nonetheless, the woman left a large tip for the female bartender, along with a note that said, “Be nice to that man; he’s lonely.”

     Weeks later, she went to the home of a seamstress she had never met to have some alterations done and was startled when the seamstress turned out to be that very bartender. The bartender laughed and admitted her in, where the woman observed – to her astonishment – the lonely man from the bar sitting on the couch. On the wall was the note she had left at the bar, which had led to their relationship.

     You never know where a random act of kindness will lead.