A Mommy Blog About Raising Men, Not Boys.
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Sunday, December 02, 2012

A Real Life Pay It Forward Story

You see those stories on Facebook about how some stranger helped someone out, usually at Walmart, and like they are sort of sweet and sort of trite and I confess - I truly have the urge to run them through Snopes.com because, I think nice things are nice but I hate it when lies are perpetuated. And I'm kind of cynical, if you didn't notice.

Imagine my surprise then, when this happened.

The husband was at Walmart last night to pick up some minilights for our tree. I sat home, diligently pulling the "prelit" strands off our tree, because they had burned out and I was determined to keep our black tree. I think it's cool. We only had two strands of minis that were working from last year so, he ran over to pick up some more.

While in the light aisle, he and another lady got to talking about lights and colors and types of lights, and they started reminiscing about the lights of our childhood, C9 and C7s.

He told her how, we've always wanted to do a retro tree with those kinds of lights but they're not cheap so we've never really been able to do it. It's about 65 bucks to do the whole tree, and well when you have four kids and three are in diapers, there is a lot ELSE you could do with that 65 bucks.

While they were having this stroll down memory lane, another man walked over and started talking to them.
"These kind of lights?" he asked. My husband said yes, and they talked again about how they were the lights from our childhood, and we really always wanted them - they were so cool, but that we just really couldn't ever afford them.

And then the man said "How about if I buy them for you?"

Then, just like that - he did.

The Kindness of Strangers
We're not poor. But, we do have a budget, and there are choices to be made when you are a big family.
We don't want for food or shelter. But this stranger did something, for Christmas, to make a little Christmas dream come true at my house.
His only condition? That we pay it forward.
Our Tree With Christmas Magic On It
I promise you, we will.

Thank you, whoever you were. You are lovely.

Merry Christmas.


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