Dear Reader
After stocking up at the shopping center we both frequent, my friend John was half a mile up Danbury Road, at the mom-andpop wine store he likes, when he reached into his pocket to pay. Uhoh. No wallet.
The stay-at-home order had just been issued in our state, and the last thing anyone needed was to be cut off from all bank and credit cards with no driver’s license. You can imagine how John felt.
He retraced his steps. Car. Kohl’s. The Stop & Shop parking lot where he’d loaded everything up and then wiped it down because no way was the coronavirus getting near his 80-year-old mother. She has asthma, and he was headed to her home to deliver some goods.
But the wallet wasn’t anywhere. He must have left it on his roof and driven off.
If you’ve read RD for long, you know the wallet test, in which we arrange to “lose” hundreds of wallets in plain sight and count how many get returned. Last time we did it, in 2013, Helsinki proved most honest, but New York City scored well, with 8 out of 12 wallets returned. Now my Connecticut town faced its own little wallet test with the anxiety of a pandemic as a backdrop.
On his drive home, John was feeling bereft. This was going to be a living nightmare. Then his cell phone rang. “Is this John?” a man said.
Five minutes later, John and the man, name of Alex, met up at a local gas station. Alex stood next to his big tree-service truck and told John how he’d spotted the wallet and braked to a stop in the middle of busy Danbury Road to retrieve it. Then his son, riding shotgun, went to work, apparently using teen whiz-kid savvy to suss out John’s cell number from social media. Now Alex, grinning from ear to ear, handed John his billfold.
John was dumbfounded at their determination. “Here, let me pay you or something,” he said, offering the $20 bill from his wallet. No, said Alex, he couldn’t take money; he needed nothing. John thanked him again, and they began to part. Then John had another idea. “Hey, do you need toilet paper?”
Alex looked sheepish. “Well, my wife
has been looking ...” he conceded. John handed him several rolls from his newly purchased stash.
“Thank you, thank you!” Alex exclaimed, as if John were the hero.
I write this column at a terribly uncertain time. By the time you read it, six weeks or more after the magazine has gone to press, COVID-19 may have killed many more of my town’s residents than the 12 it has so far—i can’t know. Our economy may be recovering or in ruins—i can’t know. I can’t know how many of us will have been brought low by this unprecedented medical crisis.
But there’s one thing I do know, with no uncertainty. The best way to fight back against a foe like this is for each of us to stay as positive as we can. Through the Depression, World War II, 9/11, and other times of great change, it has been the role of Reader’s Digest to help readers do that. Please allow this issue to help you find that happier, more optimistic place, if it can, with its stories of gratitude and family and kindness, and of an even more remarkable toilet paper exchange.
“The spirit of this guy,” John recalls of his exchange, shaking his head. “He was just so sweet.”
And please share stories of local heroes and kindness from your own life. Across America, neighborhoods, workplaces, hospitals, churches, community groups, and whole towns and cities are coming together to help others. Our annual Nicest Places search is a powerful way to put them in lights. Now is when we rely on you to go to rd.com/nicestplaces to tell the world about them.
Just write from the heart. It’s urgent for us all to hear positive stories, now more than ever.
PLEASE ALLOW THIS ISSUE TO HELP YOU FIND THAT HAPPIER PLACE, IF IT CAN.