In the last twenty-four hours, as we as a country again are struggling with the hate-filled behavior of some of our youth, I wanted to share two rays of light and hope.

Yesterday morning we went to Burlington to run some errands, and really, to see our youngest. We took him and a friend to Feldman’s Bagels (great bagels!!!!) for a late breakfast. We were all seated at our table with our food, and I decided to run back up to the front counter to get a bag of day-old bagels to bring home. While I was in line, I was suddenly bumped into hard, and a boot came down with full force on my foot.

The boot belonged to an older man, I won’t say gentleman, who was exceedingly well dressed in expensive winter clothes — enough expensive labels to make sure you knew that he wanted you to know he could afford to dress that way. He towered over me, and was a big guy. He landed on the top of my foot/ankle with full force, as well as bumping into me, and sending me bumping into the young man behind me.

The young man immediately steadied me, and asked if I was okay. No, I wasn’t okay. If I had been wearing my normal shoes, I think I might had a broken foot. Luckily, thick winter footwear meant that I only have a nasty bruise on my foot. Anyway, back to the story, the young man immediately asked if I was okay, while the older man turned around, gave me a look like I was pond scum, and said loftily, “My bad,” and walked away.

The young man? As the older guy walked away, he muttered under his breath about the guy not even asking if I was okay, and told me he was sorry I’d been treated that way.

That young man gave me hope.

Then this morning, as we were plowing, our truck got stuck. As Paul worked to get the truck out, an old somewhat battered truck went by, and minutes later, it came back and this young man jumped out and asked if we wanted him to pull us out. Within ten minutes, in the brutally cold weather and heavily falling snow, he pulled us out and made sure we were all set. When Paul asked him what we could give him for his trouble, his comment was that people needed to take care of each other and he smiled and drove away.

Two young men, two random encounters, both gave me hope for the human race. Neither one needed to do anything, and yet both showed kindness and helped another being.