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dolorosa_12It's coming up to the end of another working week (for me at least), and I'm back with another Friday open thread. A reminder for those new to this: each week, I ask a single question, and the comments section serves as a space for you to answer it, chat among yourselves, and in general have a conversation in a fairly low-pressure environment.
Today's question is: what is one moment when a stranger was kind or helpful to you?
I could list several such moments, but the one that has always stuck with me is the day I first emigrated to the UK from Australia.
I moved here more than a decade ago for postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge. Flying from Australia to Europe is never fun, but this flight was particularly hellish: I checked in too late to get my preferred aisle seat, and only middle seats were available. I spent the trip wide awake, trapped in place by the person in the aisle who fell asleep for the entire flight on both legs of the journey. I can never sleep on planes, and I hate the food, so for this flight I was exhausted, hungry, and unable to leave my seat to walk around or go to the toilet. I was also wearing my heaviest clothes to avoid having them take up space in my luggage, which meant I was overheated and uncomfortable.
Once I got to Heathrow and out of the hell that is passport control in a major international airport, I had to get myself, my 28kg suitcase, my 15kg suitcase, my laptop bag, my backpack, my overfilled shoulder bag, and my overfilled handbag out of the airport, into another terminal, onto a coach, into Cambridge, and then to my Cambridge college. By the time I arrived in Cambridge I hadn't slept for close to 48 hours and was feeling extremely emotional about being on the other side of the world from my close-knit family. I was pretty much a wreck.
When I got to my college, the porter was looking everyone up on a list and telling them where to go. If you live in college-owned accommodation in Cambridge as an undergrad, you tend to live in a dorm room in the college buildings themselves (with some exceptions). Postgraduates (again with some exceptions) live in share houses (typically converted Victorian terraces or standalone houses) that are scattered all over the city. When the porter got to me, he explained that I wouldn't be able to walk to my sharehouse with all that luggage, and would need to get a taxi.
The prospect of that final taxi drive was the final straw, and I basically started crying in the porters' lodge. Cambridge porters, thankfully, have seen everything, and this guy was prepared: he sat me down, made me a cup of tea, and gave me a packet of biscuits, then checked that I had enough cash to pay for the taxi ride, and called the taxi for me.
It wasn't a big thing, but it was the best possible welcome to my new city, my new university, and my college, and it did a lot to colour my impressions. I wouldn't say I felt at that moment that Cambridge was home, but I certainly felt it far more quickly than I would have without that first act of kindness and understanding. I still feel warm and fuzzy remembering it.
Do you have any similar stories?
Today's question is: what is one moment when a stranger was kind or helpful to you?
I could list several such moments, but the one that has always stuck with me is the day I first emigrated to the UK from Australia.
I moved here more than a decade ago for postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge. Flying from Australia to Europe is never fun, but this flight was particularly hellish: I checked in too late to get my preferred aisle seat, and only middle seats were available. I spent the trip wide awake, trapped in place by the person in the aisle who fell asleep for the entire flight on both legs of the journey. I can never sleep on planes, and I hate the food, so for this flight I was exhausted, hungry, and unable to leave my seat to walk around or go to the toilet. I was also wearing my heaviest clothes to avoid having them take up space in my luggage, which meant I was overheated and uncomfortable.
Once I got to Heathrow and out of the hell that is passport control in a major international airport, I had to get myself, my 28kg suitcase, my 15kg suitcase, my laptop bag, my backpack, my overfilled shoulder bag, and my overfilled handbag out of the airport, into another terminal, onto a coach, into Cambridge, and then to my Cambridge college. By the time I arrived in Cambridge I hadn't slept for close to 48 hours and was feeling extremely emotional about being on the other side of the world from my close-knit family. I was pretty much a wreck.
When I got to my college, the porter was looking everyone up on a list and telling them where to go. If you live in college-owned accommodation in Cambridge as an undergrad, you tend to live in a dorm room in the college buildings themselves (with some exceptions). Postgraduates (again with some exceptions) live in share houses (typically converted Victorian terraces or standalone houses) that are scattered all over the city. When the porter got to me, he explained that I wouldn't be able to walk to my sharehouse with all that luggage, and would need to get a taxi.
The prospect of that final taxi drive was the final straw, and I basically started crying in the porters' lodge. Cambridge porters, thankfully, have seen everything, and this guy was prepared: he sat me down, made me a cup of tea, and gave me a packet of biscuits, then checked that I had enough cash to pay for the taxi ride, and called the taxi for me.
It wasn't a big thing, but it was the best possible welcome to my new city, my new university, and my college, and it did a lot to colour my impressions. I wouldn't say I felt at that moment that Cambridge was home, but I certainly felt it far more quickly than I would have without that first act of kindness and understanding. I still feel warm and fuzzy remembering it.
Do you have any similar stories?
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Date: 2022-01-28 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-30 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-30 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-28 06:41 pm (UTC)Actually, I have a similarly themed story. When I first came to the US for postgrad, I couldn't sleep on the plane, had to deal with passport control in New York(!) and then due to flight delays ended up at the closest airport to my uni at 1:00am in the morning. I was supposed to take a Greyhound to the city my uni was in but I'd missed it by several hours and the station was closed. Just when I working out what to do, I got a phone call from my department head saying they'd been keeping an eye on my flight and when they realized what was happening he'd contacted a student already on the program who was visiting family in the airport city to ask them if they'd help me navigate my way to a hotel... the city in question is no place for someone to be wandering around in on their own. He told me where to meet them. Not only did she show up but she insisted on my going back to her family's house for the night. I tried to politely decline but she said she had six siblings and her mother had said one more wouldn't make any difference and she herded me into the car. I ended up staying the night with them, being fed an enormous breakfast and then arriving at my new uni via a car ride with my new friend. No, I didn't know the 'friend' bit at the time but to this day I'm the youngest sibling by 'adoption' in that family.
I've been lucky so often that I try to pay it forward every chance I get.
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Date: 2022-01-30 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-28 08:45 pm (UTC)I ended up applying to that university, and I got in. When it came time for the campus visit, I had to select a bunch of professors I was interested in interviewing with. And even though the professor I met at the conference wasn't in my field of interest, I got such good vibes from her that I put her on my list.
First thing she says when I get to her office is: "I know you've probably had a super long day with all these interviews back to back. Do you need a break to use the bathroom or get a drink of water before we get started?"
I think anyone who's been to grad school or knows someone who has is familiar with what a dehumanizing environment it can be. So for someone to just... remember that I'm a human being? I can't explain how refreshing that was after every other professor only seemed interested in my potential to make *them* look better. After just two conversations, I ended up completely switching fields so I could join her lab, and it was the best possible decision I could have made. Good people are out there!
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Date: 2022-01-30 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-28 09:34 pm (UTC)I went out of the country for the first time when I was very young, I think five. It was for a distant cousin's wedding in the UK, and I was very shy of all the new people. I'm the oldest cousin, and this was before any of my little cousins were even born, so I was the youngest person there by a whole lot, and felt very sad and left-out and scared. One young lady, whom I remember as dark-haired and a complete Grown Up and dazzlingly beautiful, decided she would take me under her wing during the afterparty, where I was basically hiding in the closet. She brought me a book with pictures of birds, and found some pencils for drawing, and spent almost the whole evening with me. I suppose in reality she could have been anywhere from 15 to 40, really, and no one remembers her based on my five-year-old's descriptions, so her real identity remains a mystery! Oh well, I still think of the Beautiful, Kind, Dark-Haired Lady very fondly.
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Date: 2022-01-30 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-28 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-30 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-29 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-30 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-29 04:42 pm (UTC)I don't really remember details because to me these were mostly little, unimportant things, quickly done and easily forgotten, of little inconvenience to me, but had the roles been reversed I would've probably remembered forever. one time though, ten years ago this summer, I was visiting my grandmother and we'd gone on a long drive from her home in the east fjords to the glacier lagoon in the south east. a young woman was hitch-hiking. I don't remember which direction or where we picked her up, but it was somewhere remote - at a junction, I think, not near a town. I convinced my grandmother to stop and pick her up and it turned out she had to get somewhere in a hurry and was out of options so she was sticking her thumb out at the side of the road. she wanted us to just drop her off at the junction on route 1 leading to the town she needed to get to, but we drove her all the way. the town is one of those where there's only one road in and out of town so it was out of the way for us, having to get off route 1 and then backtrack instead of being able to drive through. I remember this mostly because my grandmother was concerned about picking up strangers and I had pointed out that there were no more buses for the rest of the day and it would get dark in a few hours. and also because dropping this woman off was out of our way it meant *we* were late going back home and dark fell about an hour before we reached home, which turned into a 2-3 hours delay because my grandmother was almost blind in the dark and so drove very slowly. to be fair, we were driving on some VERY winding roads on mountainsides to get home so it was actually pretty unsafe for her to be driving but we made it home in the end, unharmed, and so did the woman we picked up.
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Date: 2022-01-30 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-29 05:11 pm (UTC)Once we moved to this side of town, we were much closer to a bus stop, so I became less of a hermit. I still wasn't going out regularly, but I could run out to do errands if need be. I didn't start going out regularly until I started school in 2016. I quickly found out that my hoodie was really not up to standing in the bitter cold for a half hour or more waiting for the bus when I was switching buses. But I could hardly afford buying a medium-grade winter jacket. Yeah, I could have hit a thrift store, but I have a phobia of bedbugs and it's just... really too much for me to think of wearing second-hand clothes from a thrift store.
I was blowing on my hands on one particularly cold day while waiting for the bus for my last leg home. A woman who was waiting with some dry cleaning went "Where's your jacket?" I kind of shrugged and went "eh, it's not jacket weather. I'm good with my hoodie", even though I was obviously not quite good with my hoodie.
She took her jacket out of the dry cleaning bag and went "Here. Take this. I just got a new one and this was going to Goodwill anyways". I tried to say no, but she wouldn't have it any other way. And my usual bedbug phobia was quiet because, well, she obviously just got it from a dry cleaner, so it was clean.
I spent the whole 15 minute trip home curled up in the jacket, trying not to cry.
It's turned out to be the perfect jacket for me. It's a couple sizes too big for me, but that's actually a good thing! I still rely on my hoodie for most of the winter, but I can just layer this jacket on top of the hoodie on the colder days and be perfectly warm. And, since it's a layering jacket, I can more precisely control my body temperature, which is super important with my temperature regulation issues. If I had broken down and gotten a new winter jacket that fit me, I would have been stuck choosing between being nauseous from overheating or painfully cold, but not nauseous.
I've been using my jacket a lot because I have to wait in the unheated vestibule for my bus after work and it's actually been a good reminder that, even if I have a night full of shitty customers, there are good people out there.
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Date: 2022-01-30 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-30 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-30 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-31 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-31 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-05 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-05 04:51 pm (UTC)