Why I write these
Every so often I like to put together a roundup of good news. Not the kind with a press release. The kind that happens at the park and the bus stop and the end of your street, with no camera around.
I need to be clear about what these are. These are not reports with names and dates. They are the kinds of things that happen, everywhere, all the time, told the way a neighbor would tell them to you over a fence. If one of them sounds like something you have seen, that is because you probably have. Things like this happen more than the loud stuff, and they deserve a little air.
The coach who stayed
A kid on a youth team, maybe nine or ten, could not get the hang of catching. Every practice the ball would bounce off his glove and the other kids would groan and he would look at the ground. Most coaches would move on. There are twelve other kids and only an hour.
This coach stayed. After practice, when the parents were pulling up and the other kids were running to the cars, he said, give me ten more minutes. Just him and the kid and a bucket of balls. He did it the next practice too. And the one after.
Nobody told the coach to do that. He was a volunteer with a day job and a family of his own. He just saw a kid about to decide he was bad at something and decided not to let that happen on his watch.
A few weeks later the kid made a catch in a game. Not a great one. Just a regular one. The way his teammates yelled, you would have thought he had won the whole thing. The coach did not say a word. He just clapped twice and looked at the next batter.
The bus driver and the forgotten lunch
A kid gets on the school bus and realizes halfway there that the lunch bag is sitting on the kitchen counter. Starts to cry, quietly, the way kids do when they do not want anyone to notice.
The driver notices. At the school, before the kid gets off, the driver hands over a granola bar and an apple from a bag under the seat. Says, I keep extras, happens all the time. The kid stops crying.
Here is the part I love. The driver did not keep extras for that kid. The driver kept extras because, years ago, some other kid forgot a lunch, and the driver decided to never be caught without one again. That is what a small kindness does. It turns into a habit, and the habit waits for the next kid.
The neighbor and the lawn
A man on a quiet street goes into the hospital for a couple of weeks. His wife is there with him most days. The lawn starts to get long. Then one morning it is mowed. No note, no knock. It is mowed again the next week. Trash cans pulled in on trash day too.
When he comes home, he never finds out which neighbor did it. He asks around and everybody shrugs. I have a feeling it was more than one of them, and I have a feeling none of them will ever admit it.
Two kids set up a lemonade stand on a hot Saturday. Next to the cash box is a jar with a handwritten sign that says, for the animal shelter. Half of everything goes in the jar. A guy walking his dog puts in a twenty and does not take a lemonade. The kids stare at it like it is a hundred.
Later that week the kids walk into the shelter with the jar. The person at the desk tears up a little. The kids do not understand why. They will when they are older.
Nobody in any of these stories was trying to be a hero. The coach stayed ten minutes. The driver kept an apple under the seat. The neighbor mowed a lawn. The kids made a sign. Small moves, made quietly, with no one watching and no one keeping score.
Play a Positive Phil game
Good Deed Dash
Run the maze and collect good deeds.
That is the kind of good I want more of in my own life. Not big gestures. Ten minutes after practice. An extra apple. A lawn. I think God pays close attention to the quiet ones, and I think most of what holds a neighborhood together never gets written down.
So this week, be one of the stories. Stay the extra ten minutes. Keep an apple in the bag. Nobody has to know.
The good news is not rare. It is just quiet. Go be some of it.
