This week I give away stuff… randomly.
Have you been ROAK’d yet? I know four people who have in the past fortnight. My friend Kerrie was walking to the servo to buy toilet paper and a woman she didn’t know handed her a bunch of jonquils. Just like that. A reader on my blog wrote to tell me some guy in front of her in the cafe queue paid for her coffee last week. Another two had their parking meter topped up by a stranger. In all but one case, they were handed a little note or card that informed them they were recipients of a Random Act of Kindness and that encouraged them to do the same to someone else. To pay it forward.
Americans are all over this odd little practice of guerilla dumping niceness on random strangers. Oprah has her Kindness Chain project. Her fans are invited to do a kind deed and write it down in a little journal that has their name and address on it and a request for the journal to be returned when full. They then invite the receiver of their RAOK to pass on the love – and the journal – to others.
In Line Behind Me is a Washington-based blog dedicated to people who’ve been shouted coffees by strangers. They’re slipped a card inviting them to post a heart-warming story about the RAOK on said blog. The “shouter” can then log on and read about their amazing altruism the next day. Which, I suppose, means it’s really a blog dedicated to people who want to read about themselves on blogs.