09.17.08
Good deeds remembered
Twenty-five years ago, I was 19 and working in Delft, Netherlands for a summer. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I ran low on cash a week before it was time to go home. This was before ATMs, so it was tricky to get more. There were no places in the Netherlands that would advance me cash on my Visa, but I heard that there was in Brussels.
I took some of my dwindling supply of cash, bought a ticket to Brussels, and discovered that the place I needed to go wasn’t open. (Maybe I had been foolish enough to try on a Sunday? I don’t remember.) Worse, I was about USD$0.50 short of the fare I needed to get back to Delft. I asked a stranger for 50c, he handed me a buck and I immediately took off to the ticket counter and got a ticket.
When I got my ~50c change, I realized I should have given it back to the stranger. Ooops. But he was lost in the crowd, so I instead got myself an ice cream cone — the only food I’d had all day.
I think he spotted me a bit later, eating the ice cream cone. I was embarrassed to have him see me eating the cone, so I hid my face. He probably figured that he’d just been had.
So Mr. Stranger? Whoever you are? If that was you 25 years ago in August in the main train station in Brussels, I wasn’t a runaway or drug addict or anything — I was exactly who I said I was. To this day, I remain very grateful for your generosity on that day. The buck might not have meant a huge amount to you, but it made all the difference in the world to me. Thank you.
