My hand to god, people, it’s the little things. Random act of kindness from strangers can make me absolutely dissolve on the spot. Like today, as I was racing to work with a casserole that needed to be photographed for a story, and it tumbled to the ground.

　　I know that gravity is my arch-enemy, but I just stared at the broken casserole in shock. My kids were practically traumatized. “Are you going to get fired?” my daughter wanted to know. “No,” I shrugged, “I’ll just have to make another one.” (coming next week: Chili pie!) But, I still had to get the kids to school, so I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to drop them off, then come back and somehow deal with this mess.

　　When I came back, the mess was already cleared up. The only person on the street was a city worker who was part of a tree-trimming crew. He said, “Oh, I cleaned it up. It smelled so good, what was it?” I practically burst into tears on the spot. Instead, I thanked him profusely, got in the car, and still got to work 15 minutes late. Just that kind of day.

　　All of this is a long intro as to why I am not surprised that this particular story has gone viral: An Ohio woman stopped by McDonald’s on her way home, but when she got to the window, realized that she forgot her wallet. The McDonald’s employee said, “It’s okay ma’am, I got you,” and pulled money out of his own wallet to pay.

　　After getting permission from the young man, Jeremiah McDonald-Hemphill, the woman posted the story on Facebook, where it got picked up by Yahoo! News: “I asked him if I could hug him and told him to keep being who he is because he is an amazing person. He didn’t know how tired I was or that I hadn’t eaten or even if he would be repaid but he didn’t even bat an eye and just acted.”

　　Just like my tree-trimming guy (How did he even clean that up? It was disgusting!) Anyway, it’s a valuable reminder not to let the chance to do a random good deed go by. I won’t forget it, and I hope you don’t either.