Img: Paper Girl
Welcome to the first installation of Doe Deere’s Box of Delights! This one’s for all the pink lovers. In a typical Sphinx-like fashion, I shall present you with a question which you must answer in order to be entered. Winner will be picked randomly on June 9th.
What is the most memorable, no matter how small, good deed that you’ve done?
my bff was in a very abusive relationship – while i couldn’t get her to leave him at the time i did however manage to get her to train in capoeira with me which distracted and empowered her at the same time! 6 months later she quit her job that was making her unhappy
and left the destructive scumbag!
omg give it to Emily Nicole.
I live in LA where it is impossible to estimate travel time due to dogs, cats, drunks, people who are constantly high on california bud, celebs (wait I repeat myself!), people yapping on their cellphones, rubber neckers, and random cones/barrels in the road that are changed each night along with the freeway on/off ramps to make your trips infinitely more exciting.
Anyway the point is, if I have to be somewhere on Monday night I make sure to leave Tuesday morning and use my signals (gasp!) and actually let people into my lane. My driving karma has not come back to me yet, in fact my beloved car was just totaled by some dick who was speeding to make a light and t-boned me in an intersection.
Oh well, fuck my life. Maybe one day one of these rude Californians will actually give me a little thank you wave for my constant good deeds on the streets of LA.
I like to think of myself as a crusader for polite and sane driving in the rudest city in the world, La La land.
Being there for my mother when her best friend tried to commit suicide and ended up in the hospital. My mom doesn’t have very many friends outside of her work and sometimes, it is hard for her to talk my dad about things, so I knew that me being there for her to vent and discuss things with – was the best ‘deed’ I could do. I am grateful for my mom and all she has done for me.
When I was at highschool I was in a friendship group that could have been considered a bit of a clique. Think the plastics from Mean Girls, only with fifteen girls, instead of three.
One day they all started verbally bullying a girl in the group that quite a few of us were good friends with, trying to make her feel as small as possible with the usual. “Nobody likes you, who here even likes her?!” I was the only one out of the entire group that stood up and said, “Actually, I like her, she’s one of my best friends so back off!” which shut them all up at once.
It sounds a bit silly but I’m really proud that I’ve never been one to follow the crowd or who’d be nasty, just to fit into a popular clique and that it didn’t even take a second thought for me to stick up for her.
That was years ago, but whenever I bump into her she always reminds me of that story.
x
One time a friend and I bought a bag of mini Mars bars, y’know the big multipacks. We walked around the shopping centre and handed them out to random people, just because. People were kind of taken aback but most were thankful!
Guess they didn’t follow the ‘don’t take candy from strangers’ rule though…!
one that i will never forget and i don’t know if it counts as a good deed or not. is when walking through the campus a few months ago i saw a little girl crying and nobody seemed to care.. i was running late to class. but i couldn’t just leave her there she was like 6 years old.. so i went with her. and asked what happened to her… she told me she couldn’t find her mom.. and that she have been walking through the campus for a while.. so i took her to the cafeteria and buy her donut :P and some hot chocolate.. and we went with the security people at college i told them what happened.. and this security lady told me that they will take care of her but i don’t know i just couldn’t leave her there not knowing if she would be okay.. so i decided to stay with her .. half an hour later her mom arrived she was very scared but relieved that she had found her after all.. she thanked me so much for taking care of her little girl.. she told me that she had lost the little girl when walking to the parking lot after buying some books
i was very happy to see that the little girl was finally with her mom..
I took a very feeble kitten from the street and now she lives with me and I adore her! And I also have planted many trees!So I make this planet more green and my grandchildren will be able to come and see already huge trees in many years.
I was buying lunch at the school cafeteria and was about to walk away when this girl who was behind me came up to the register. She didn’t have any money, but you could tell she really needed something to eat (I had seen her in the cafeteria most other days just sitting by herself without anything to eat). So I bought her lunch. I never found out her name, what grade she was in, or anything.
working in a coffee shop i find that ppl are often unexplainably cranky. perhaps its the lack of caffine at the 5 oclock hour..but when 7am rolls around…theres just no reason to be rude. but, ive found that a kind gesture and a smile go a really long way to make someone’s day. so, whenever anyone comes into my store and seems down, or is unkind to either myself or my baristas, i tell them, “i can see you are having a bad day, i want to buy your coffee for you” then i smile and walk away. its amazing the kind of emotional return you get for such a small monetary gift. :)
*smiling is contagious…pass it on!!!
the most memorable good deed i’ve done is giving our car, a 1995 mercury cougar, to our neighbor as a christmas present. we’d recently gotten another car, and just before christmas our neighbor fell into a hard time of things. his car had broken down, and he was struggling to make ends meet getting to work.
we went to the store and grabbed one of those HUGE, like three feet wide, red christmas car bows and wrapped it around the car after taking it to a local car wash. then we picked up a gas gift card and put it inside a funny christmas card with a note that said to walk around the corner to our house, where we’d hidden the car from direct line of sight of his front door.
he went totally insane! some might think it creepy, but we really didn’t need two cars, you know? he needed it far more than we did, so that weekend, just after christmas, he and my husband went down to the dmv to change the title over. they did a “bill of sale” for the cost of the title transfer, making sure that our neighbor didn’t owe any gift tax, and everybody walked away feeling just a bit more of the christmas spirit. :)
About 4 years ago I started up with Big Brothers/Big Sisters. I have had a sister named Frances the entire time and she is really a member of my family now. It has been so wonderful watching her grow up. She was just leaving 6th grade when I met her and she is not finishing her sophomore year of highschool!
Around the end of April, I was walking home from school when a woman came up to me asking me where “the doctor’s office” was. She barely spoke English (and there were at least ten doctors in the area), but she had an address to a place that was nowhere near where we were standing. Since we weren’t really able to communicate, I just offered to walk her to the office, even though it meant turning around and going back to where I’d come from, in the rain. It was a long walk and I got home an hour later than I normally would have, but I’m glad I was able to help despite the language barrier.
My most memorable good deed is pretty insignificant, but I remember it even though it was about 4 or 5 years ago now.
It was back in the day when I did tap dancing classes (I was an ultra cool 10 year old…), and every week I noticed that there was this girl who was ultra shy and kept to herself, wheras I was the mega chatty one, who, to be honest, forced herself on people a little bit, but was always in a crowd of people.
Anyways, this girl kept to herself, and didn’t talk to anyone, but always seemed quite lonely. I always meant to go and talk to her, but I could never think of a good excuse.
Lo and behold, one week, we were at the same audition, and the next dance class I went over and talked to her about it. I’ll never forget the look on her face, the way she smiled because someone was actually talking to her for once. She ended up friends with the majoirty of the people in the class, and it was pretty insignificant, just starting a conversation, but it was pretty memorable for me, because it was such a tiny thing, but it made such a difference.
When my boyfriend’s mother was gone for the week I took over all the household duties for her, and actually left the house cleaner for her when she came home, than she had left it when she departed. She hates coming home to a messy house and her son is a bit of a clutter-bug, so I tried to make it as easy as possible for her, so she doesn’t have to deal with too much on top of her illness.
I used to throw balloons and paper airplanes out of my window high up on which I wrote messages of love. For example: Someone loves you very much | There is always hope, don’t give up | you’re gonna have mindblowing sex this week | imagine me kissing you | … Sometimes I included my cellphone number and once a man called! He had found an airplane of mine and wanted to tell me that it made his day which had actually been very depressing so far. So spreading some love made me happy as well :)
What an adorable box!!! Most memorable I guess would be a few months ago when I helped a newly blind man find his way home. I can’t wait to read through all these. :-)
About a year ago, I was walking to my house, and there was a pregnant woman trying to push a baby carriage up stairs and carrying some grocery bags, no one else that was walking by seemed interested so I ran and helped her carry it up the stairs into the building, she was really grateful and said something about her having a hard time and thanked me with a huge smile. that made my day, and the rest of the week. And it still makes me smile when I remember. (and the baby was so adorable <3)
When I was in Paris a year ago I was visiting the Louvre. We were walking trough the halls and then I saw a women and the zipper from her pants were open. I can’t speak french so I showed her what I meant. It was so funny and she was very thankfull.
Ha ha ha, well I remember once when I went into a public bathroom and used up the last of the toilet paper I went into the next stall and put in a little bit more so the next person wouldn’t be without. Because I really hate when that happens to me!
i work at a coffee shop. every night we literally throw out 2-3 trash bags full of bagels, scones, ect that we baked earlier that morning. i but aside a few take out bags and give them to these homeless men i see everyday on my way home from work
A while back, my then-boyfriend and I were driving through downtown St. Louis, on our way to the zoo. I’d been drowsy all day and had cranked the passenger seat back to take a quick catnap before a full day of bear-watching. As I floated in and out of consciousness, we pulled up to one of the largest intersections in town, idling at the red light.
Out of nowhere, there was a squeal of tires, the thunderous explosion of grille-on-door, and the delicate rain of glass. I shot straight up from my reclined position and took in the sight: an old Buick stood in the center of the intersection surrounded by glass and smashed in the front, nose-to-side with a light truck. The truck’s driver seemed to be okay, but the Buick’s driver wasn’t moving. No one that was stopped at the lights moved. Except me.
Before I knew what I was doing, I’d leapt out of my vehicle and torn across the pavement to the Buick. Inside was an elderly black woman slumped over the steering wheel, not moving. I opened the car door and spoke to her. She stirred and attempted to sit up. I helped her right herself as she babbled nonsensically. She didn’t look hurt but kept clutching her midsection where it had struck the steering column. Like she had internal injuries.
I made sure she stayed in the car and reassured her over and over that the ambulance and police were on their way. She kept muttering something about having run the light and not seeing the truck; she wanted to get out and see what happened to her car. Fortunately, she didn’t move and could focus on me.
Sooner than I’d thought, because St. Louis isn’t really known for its excellent response time in this area of town, the authorities showed up. The EMTs rushed over and began inspecting the woman, testing all her vitals. One of them pulled me aside to ask me what had happened. As I gave my statement, I scanned the intersection. No one else had moved – I was the only one who helped.
I couldn’t believe that not a single other person in all of the dozens of vehicles that witnessed the crash had gotten out to help either of the victims. I hadn’t even had a conscious thought – I just acted. It was a strange feeling, especially when I realized that nobody else did the same.
There was this girl in my gym class in grade 11 and she was always being made fun of by all the ‘pretty’ girls. She was a bit of a Tomboy and a little bit shy and introverted. I started talking to her and she confessed to me that she was thinking about commiting suicide, I was shocked because even though people sometimes talk about it she was really serious. So, I talked to her and she began telling me more, like that her step-father was abusive towards her when her mother (who works for the army) was away. I became friends with her and hung out with her and she told me a few months ago (I still talk with her over msn) that I was the one that talked her out of commiting suicide and to actually live her life to the fullest and how she wanted to become something. I asked her how I did that and she told me just by having someone to talk to about her problems that actually cared was all that she needed.
Actually, I made it my profession and studied psychology. Now I am helping people with psychiatric disorders every day. Patients with psychiatric illnesses are just so great to work with. Bit that’s not everybody’s cup of tea and most people don’t understand my joy.
:)
When I worked in Disneyland Paris (I’ve worked there for 2 years) I was a <a href=”http://disney.go.com/disneyhand/voluntears/details.html”voluntEAR and one day got asked to accompany a family through the parks. They had a little boy of 6 who was terminally ill, and a little girl of 8. I was supposed to only spend 1 day with them, but ended up taking the rest of the week unpaid leave of my daily job to accompany them, be their personal guide and make sure the holiday was one they would never forget. I never forget, despite his discomfort and the pain, happy and radiant the little boy looked and how much he laughed. Even though I was only part of their life for a few days, I really hope I made some kind of difference, however small.
Of course, I fail at html tags.. It was supposed to be: VoluntEARS, obviously :)
About a month and a half ago we had a blizzard and it was absolutely freezing! I went out to get the mail and I found a baby mouse (tiny, not much bigger than a quarter) I took him in and named him felix, he was too little to eat and drink so I had to eyedropper feed him. We think he was hurt by a cat or something because one of his legs was pretty mangled. He passed away the week later but I felt okay because he died comfortably instead of freezing out in the snow or being eaten.
(hm? Did this post?)
This one is really silly, but it’s one of the most fun things I’ve ever done!
The year before last, my (now) husband was waiting in a cold line for a Black Friday computer deal. He called me around midnight, requesting some warm food, and some nearby folks jokingly request hot cocoa. I relay this to my mother, and instantly knew we were thinking the same thing! So we went to the line, armed with gallons of hot cocoa and bags of cookies to pass around. Some people were skeptical, but most seemed to really enjoy it. The funny thing was, we had EXACTLY enough for everyone in line. I thought we were going to have a cup left over, but someone got in line just as we reached the end.
I used to be best friends with this girl. About two years ago we found out she’d been lying to us for around 18 months about having this boyfriend. We were all shocked and really hurt that she could be so deceitful but I decided to take her back into our group because otherwise she’d have had no friends and despite all she’d done I didn’t want that to happen to her.
I’ve been put in a similar position recently, when the same girl pretty much abandoned us for a boyfriend, a real one this time, but now he’s left school I’ve accepted her back once again. She was really upset a few months ago because of some drama with him and I invited her to mine to talk about it, even though we had barely talked in months.
I didn’t think she really deserved my sympathy or even my attention after the way she’d treated my friends and I, but when it came down to it I still cared about her, and couldn’t abandon her even if she’d do the same to me.
I love that so many of these good deeds are about helping animals. I’d have to say that’s the deed that makes me feel the best too…rescuing 3 kitties from the shelter. One of them was sooo sick, his fur was falling out and he was just emaciated. I fed him baby food every 4 hours for weeks and weeks, and now he’s the biggest and strongest of the 3. At the time I was really scared and I questioned wether I’d taken on too much, but it all worked out and we’re all stronger for it.
I used to help the Veterinary technicians at the Oregon Humane society, mostly with check-ins and basic health screenings, and the occasional vaccination. I got to meet all kinds of puppies and sweet kitties, but Lola I will always remember, because she came to us in the worst way possible.
Her former owner had taken it upon himself to break all four of her legs, and beat her with some sort of blunt object, and then proceeded to dump her out on the traintracks. Thank goodness we found her!
Anyways, it was really rewarding getting to help rehabilitate sweet Lola (who was a really nice Pit-Bull girl, despite what had happened to her). I even helped teach her to walk again! Hurray! As if that didn’t make me bust with joy, I got to show her to the family she would find her permanent home with! Double yay!
When I was in high school and still lived at home, our neighbors down the street had three dogs that they took terrible care of. Two of them were tough and did fine being outside all the time (we lived in a small community in Alaska so dogs were never tied up), but the third one was really young and skiddish. I was finally able to befriend her after weeks of trying, and she eventually was brave enough to follow me home. We weren’t able to take her in, but whenever the weather was bad or she just needed some love she’d come to our house. We started calling her Little Girl, and yy mom would even let her snuggle up in her bed with her. I think it was probably the only positive attention she ever received. The Humane Society eventually picked up all of their dogs and adopted them out.
Halloween when I was eleven and living on a naval base, the “take one please” bowl of candy we’d left while trick-or-treating was smashed and all the candy stolen. My sister and I sat out there for two hours giving our candy away, since every family had a father or mother out to sea and money was tight, so we wanted them to still have candy. I still feel good about that.
I volunteer at Sweet Binks Rabbit Rescue (www.rirabbits.org/) and help educate people about the proper way to care for house rabbits. It’s amazing that so many people have them as pets but don’t feed them properly or don’t let them out of their cage enough or simply dump them in the wild when they get sick of them. It’s horrible. This amazing rescue is also a no kill shelter volunteer only shelter and they have adopted 998 rabbits within RI since 2002. I got involved once I got my first rabbit last year. They make awesome pets! Mine is litter box trained and is free range when my bf and I are home. She’s awesome and it make me angry and sad that so many rabbits are abused and left for dead in the wild so I wanted to help out and educate people about the awesomeness of bunnies as pets.
I brought blonde brownies to my entire japanese class and gave one to each person, even the one who thinks im ignorant and likes to remind me most days. I loved his face, a cross between bliss and horror.
Once, when I lived in my old house, I was walking home when one of the neighbor’s children whizzed past me on a razor scooter. He was their four year old son, Danny, and he didn’t have a helmet or even shoes on. Most likely his mother was too busy with his older sister to know he was even out of the house. Needless to say he crashed spectacularly, cutting his lip open, scratching up his cheek and getting a y nose and skinned knee all at once. I dropped my bag and ran over to pick him up and wipe his face off as best as I could, he was the cutest little blond haired, blue eyed boy in the world, and hugged picked him up to get him to stop crying. Then i carried him home, with him still bawling and bleeding. his mom barely even noticed what a mess he was when she opened the door, she just said a quick thank you and went back to whatever it was she had been doing.
While i lived in japan, i went to a church that made onigiri, or rice balls after church to distribute to the homeless. I helped out every sunday, and one day i saw a homeless man in the corner just watching from the stairs. I invited him down, where we had refreshments and snacks.
he gave me a toothy smile and i saw him every sunday, and invited him down, where he started to help make the onigiris as well
Very simply, I think the best thing I’ve ever done is speak to a mentally slow person as if they were a normal person. I didn’t sugar coat or dumb down the conversation, I just spoke.
I think one of the greatest deeds I’ve done for another person was when my best friends aunt died of cancer, this woman had been like her second mom, and talked to her on the phone for four hours. And not only did I comfort her through that, but the fact that her boyfriend had ditched her for his friends to play video games. It makes me feel good to think I helped her get through two thought things at once.
My most memorable was one week after hurricane Katrina happen, i went over to Mississippi/Gulf port and helped people get water,food and canned goods together in a box. It makes u realize how important the simple things in life are, which we often take for granted.
my most memorable deed was when i gave one of the old men at the nursing home i work at, my sketch book so he can draw. the place i volunteered at was an elderly home for the mentally disabled, and its ran by the city, so it was really dingy :/
mr. Claude would draw on the walls and get in trouble, then draw on toilet paper /^_^’ it was a mess. so i gave him my sketch book. i even took piccy’s with him and his drawing. i’ll miss him :]
what an amazing idea for a drawing! reading these comments makes me feel all warm and fuzzy thinking about how amazing people can be (:
one of the nicest things I think I’ve ever done was actually in first grade. the father of a girl in my class had just died from stomach cancer, and none of the kids in the class were really sure how to respond to the girl since she was so sad. as a result, no one talked to the girl, and so she sat alone by herself during playtime. one day I went and sat next to her and asked her to play a game with me. 17 years later we’re still amazing friends.
One of my most memorable good deeds was the one time I let my baby brother win a board game. Being 4 years older, I naturally won most every game we played together and I will never forget his smile when he won.
I was at Disneyworld a few years ago, my mom and I stopped to eat in a Toy Story themed arcade place. I bought a bunch of tokens but was disappointed to notice all the games were really kiddish, so I didn’t use many tokens. As my mom and I were eating I saw two little girls at a table near by, they were pleading with their mom to get some tokens. I heard the mom tell her daughters they had to watch their money and they could play games at home.
Right before I left I grabbed my big cup of tokens and walked over to the table and smiled at them and set it down, “Here, I’m leaving now and I wont be using these. You guys take ‘em.” The mom looked at me, “All of them?” I nodded and the girls looked so happy and so cute. The mom thanked me and I left with my mom.
I dunno, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I feel like I made those girls happy, and I feel like I made that mom really happy too. :3
When I used to live in California, my friend Damage would buy lunch for the homeless man across the street from our hangout. We would sit with him and eat together, the three of us talking about misc randomness.
My memorable good deed is very small in comparison to the incredibly kind things people have done, but nonetheless it still brings a smile to my face when I think about it :)
Last year we enlisted as many school teachers as we possibly could and gave students the chance to “vent their frustration” by paying to throw wet sponges at them. The teachers seemed to have fun keeping on their toes, attempting to dodge the sponges and cursing when they were hit, and the students loved it ;) We raised nearly $200 in the process of having heaps of fun! We donated the money to help educate underprivileged girls in Africa. We hope that by our silly fun that others can be educated and be given the same chance we’ve been granted :)
I let my friend date my ex. I think that was pretty generous.
I was London once in the fall/winter when its reeally cold and rainy and there was this homeless lady @ kingston station outside sitting on the ground, i walked by feeling sorry for her, then stopped and turned around and gave her 1 of my warmest and one of my favoritest jackets ;))))) I walked away feeling vainless and full of delight !!!
What is the most memorable, no matter how small, good deed that you’ve done?
I saved a kitten.
I love animals and cats aren’t excluded! Tho I like dogs better, but still. I had a cat for 14 years and she was my love.
So how it went. I was studying really hard for an exam and at sudden I head a cat cry. A small kitten. And that’s just really terrible! I tried to ignore it for a second or two, then I started thinking how it sounded like. It sounded like if my neighbour wanted to kill his cats. OMG I so didn’t want that! So I started thinking about calling the police and report him! But instead I went out of my house in my pyjamas, slippers and a tank top (I looked really bizarre!) and checked the area. Ha! The cat was crying louder and louder and hell I couldn’t stand the sound of it. It made my heart broke. I ahem got on my neighbour propriety, sneaking around in my pink slippers, trying to understand where the sounds comes from and praying that it’s not somewhere too high. And then the cat started to cry even more! Can you imagine it?! I was so desperate to run to the neighbour’s door and ring the bell. A couple of times. No body was home. HECK! So I finally found the place from where the sound was coming of.. and omg what I saw! Three kittens, plus their mom. Not older than a couple of weeks. One of them was trapped upside down with his head between a leg of the table (that came down as a V, really vintage looking). Damn when I saw that I knew that the poor kitten’s neck would break in a matter of minutes. Ah, the terrible truth! Then I tried to find a way there. My neighbour has some really big propriety, and me sneaking around there wasn’t the best idea ever. But still, I managed to get to the kitten, not without a problem and.. oh boy! The mom was pissed at me, plus the trapped kitten started moving even more, crying even louder, desperate to save himself! It made me smile, because I knew that he would me safe in a matter of seconds. I lifted his little body and saved his trapped head. He stopped crying as soon as I got him on the floor. Ahhhh pure silence! I felt really proud of myself, and under pressure. But at least.. I did something good, even if when I told later about this to some friends, they laughed at me. Oh well.
A few weeks ago my aunt was incredibly stressed out from a family situation going on, so I took her out for lunch and shopping, and the day before I bought her a pet stroller for her dog. Afterwards, she said it made her feel a lot better and that I made her day, which was pretty much the best reward out of it.