Would You Be Willing to Spend 25 Cents to Buy a Stranger 10 Minutes ?
YES! I AM A CYNIC!!
Technology will, sooner or later, make this Good Semaritan's good works obsolete.
I fully expect to see parking meters that automatically send out fines to owners of vehicles parked the second a meter goes "red".
No ticket required. No meter-maid or police officer writing tickets and sticking them under the windshield wiper. Just an automatic ticket generated by small cameras installed at a strategic location to photograph the license plate. It works for speed cameras. No reason it won't work for parking tickets.
I sure hope I'm wrong.
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Would You Be Willing to Spend 25 Cents to Buy a Stranger 10 Minutes?
As we go through our busy days we are usually so wrapped up in our next appointment; what we will cook for dinner; what time the kids have to be picked up.... the list goes on.....that we can forget that there are others around us.
This morning as Larry and I were at the end of our morning walk at Delray Beach, we saw a young man going along the sidewalk and feeding the meters with the red “Expired” sign flashing in the window. He stopped at each meter, checked the status, then dropped in a quarter.
It was such an unexpected and kind gesture it made me wonder how many of us would have spent a quarter to buy a stranger 10 minutes of time. (In Delray, beach parking is 25 cents for 10 minutes.)
Larry and I have made this “mad dash” on more than a few mornings. You set your watch and know when you must “feed the meter” only to be stopped by a friend for a quick hello and chat. Or on those occasions when we saw the flashing red on meters near our car, we were always so busy talking or wrapped up in our thoughts, that it never occurred to either one of us to buy that person an extra 10 minutes.
I hope that next time I’ll step out of my own little world and be better prepared to perform a Random Act of Kindness.
Random Acts of Kindness are out there.... we just have to learn to look for them.
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