I Like

(This is part two of the answer to Teresa's question about what I like about people.)

...random acts of kindness.

When I was little, Dad once picked up a hitchhiker. The man didn't need to go very far, but we got to hear a little of his story as Dad drove. him to his destination. Before then, I had never imagined that someone would travel without a car.

When my father was little, his father used to invite homeless men to sleep on their couch. Dad would often wake up and go out to the living room to find a stranger-friend in his home.

...food drives.

Our churches gave away food and grocery store gift certificates to families who needed help.

Once, our church had a food drive for my family! They couldn't afford to pay us very much at the time, so they gave us a lot of food instead. Some of it was the kind of food Mom would almost never buy - flavoured instant noodles, cake mixes, the expensive brands of canned soup that didn't need to have any water added to them. Sadly, Mom could not be convinced to purchase more of that salty and sugary goodness when we had eaten what we had been given. ;)

...Santa.

One year Santa attended our church Christmas party.  A woman from our church bumped into a man while shopping. "You look just like Santa," she said, never being one to keep  a thought firmly inside her head if she could share it instead. "I play him at Christmas sometimes," he said. "You must come to our church Christmas party," she insisted. So he came and gave everyone miniature candy canes.

We may never have been raised to believe Santa was real, but when we were teenagers Dad would try to wake us up on Christmas Eve by stomping his boots around and saying Ho Ho Ho rather loudly. And then he would take a big bite out of one of the Christmas cookies. I never woke up, though, so he had to tell me about it the next day!