Small acts of kindness can mean the most
We underestimate the power of a minor kindness. A door held open, or a smile made in passing. A pause in our day to point an out-oftowner in the right direction. These are the kinds of gestures we tend to think of as nice but small, if we think about them at all.
In the span of two weeks, Karen Campbell of Dublin was on the receiving end of two such acts. They were equally “small,” yet they so moved her that her voice shakes as she recounts them.
Campbell, 81, was born in central Ohio but left in 1955 to attend the University of Colorado. She majored in fine arts and education but ultimately made her career in research fund development. She spent most of her life in Colorado and New Jersey but moved back to Ohio in 2006.
“I am constantly surprised at the kindness of Ohioans,” she said. “I guess I would say,
having lived abroad quite a bit in my life, I do have a frame of reference.”
The first of her two recent reminders occurred outside a Kroger in Dublin.
She had finished shopping and wheeled her cart to her car. Just as she opened her trunk, a man who looked to be in his 20s appeared beside her.
“This young man just stepped forth without a word,” she said. “I’m not even sure if he was coming or going from the store.”
He said, “It is my honor to load your groceries in your car.”
It was his honor.
“I just thought his wording was so dear,” Campbell said.
“I stood there and watched him, and I can’t even find the words to thank him,” she said. “I felt like giving him a hug, and I decided that probably wasn’t quite appropriate.”
Off he went. She didn’t get his name.
Soon after that, she had a doctor’s appointment at the Ohio State University campus. She parked in the South Cannon Garage.
“They have a very new, to me, machine” to pay for parking, she said. “I had never used the machine before. I was standing there with a cane, with my pocketbook, with my library book and with all my medical supplies my doctor had given me.”
She placed her book, doctor’s papers and supplies on top of the machine to free up her hands. She was about 10 minutes from campus when she realized she had left them there.
“I turned around and went back and went in and of course the book and the medical supplies were not on top of the machine,” she said. A woman in the garage suggested checking with security at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital.
Campbell explained it all to a security officer, “a very nice fella.”
“Was it ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’?” he asked about the book. “That just came in.”
Someone had gone out of their way to walk her belongings over to the James. Campbell still felt she hadn’t properly thanked the young man at Kroger. This person she couldn’t thank at all.
“They must have some sense of conscience and responsibility,” she said. “I’d just like the rest of the world to know that.”
So she wrote to The Dispatch, hoping that her helpers might recognize themselves in the newspaper.
“Having no way to thank these two persons properly, I hope that they read The Dispatch and will feel appreciated,” Campbell wrote. “Could it be that such acts of kindness are becoming contagious in Ohio?”
Over the phone she tried to explain further this idea that kindness can spread, and she hit upon the same word.
“Could you say a contagious spirit?” she wondered. “Well, we can hope.”