Kindness isn’t limited to fairy tales. Sometimes, everyday people step into the role of a fairy godmother, bringing magic into strangers’ lives through words or actions. These 16 stories of kind gestures have been shared by users online.
- When I was a very young and pregnant girl living in the South, I was used to getting a lot of rude stares or comments about having a baby so young and out of wedlock. Still, one very old lady came up to me handed me $20, and said, “Hey honey, here’s to help with diapers, they get pretty expensive. Best of luck to you.” That moment of kindness will stick with me forever. © coddiwomplek / Reddit
- In college, in my freshman year, I was kind of in a funk talking to women. I guess that happens when you adjust from a small high school to a huge college. But I was more shy than I normally was. Well, I was at a party and caught a girl’s eye, and despite being shy, I summoned the courage to talk to her.
What resulted was me being embarrassed. I don’t recall exactly what happened, but it was along the lines of I said hi, and she said something like, “Try somewhere else, 3’s shouldn’t talk to 10’s.” I also remember her saying it out loud and a few guys nearby laughing loudly about it and going on to exclaim that I got rejected. Well, I walked to another room to escape and felt someone following me.
I turned around to see the most beautiful woman I had seen in my entire 4 years of college. She went on to tell me that the girl I spoke to and her friends have been playing a game where they get guys to talk to them, then reject them and that I should shrug it off. She told me to stick with her the rest of the night, and I’d be her “boyfriend.” She was a senior about to graduate, and I was just ending my first semester. But literally, that one act of kindness gave me my confidence back, and I dropped the newly acquired shyness that I had developed.
I saw her a few times around campus after that, and she’d run up to me and give me a huge hug. That would be a great feeling for anyone to do it, let alone her! She even sent me messages throughout my time in college seeing how I was doing. © chuck_cascio / Reddit
© Daderot / Wikimedia Commons
- One day while I was working at a fast food joint, this lady left her Louis Vuitton bag on a table. I waited about 20 minutes but remembered seeing her leave, and so I grabbed it and put it in lost and found. I never once looked inside.
A month went by. My boss said, “Hey, it’s been a month…do you want that bag?” I said sure and went in the back to retrieve it. I unzipped the top and to my surprise, nothing was in it but a piece of paper. I opened up the piece of paper, and it was a receipt for the bag.
On the receipt was a note saying, “To the girl who needed a new purse during the holidays.” Whoever this lady was intended on doing this in the first place. I looked at the receipt….$1700 for this bag!? I carefully put my items in it and took it home and didn’t say another word about it.
That purse made me look good at a ton of job interviews. I still keep the bag because it reminds me of humbling days when I didn’t have much and reminds me to give back to others. © Katelyn Guzman / Quora - A stranger just randomly gave me a pink rose. He was an older guy and the fact that he just gave it to me without saying anything with a smile on his face made my day, week, and month now. I’ve never seen him since then. © Unknown author / Reddit
- My mom was living with me and had Alzheimer’s. We were waiting our turn to pay before leaving the dentist’s office. She overheard another woman say she couldn’t afford the amount they had quoted for whatever she needed. My Mom, God rest her soul, asked me, “Do I have money?” I told her yes, and she said, “Okay, I want to pay for that ladies’ dental bill.”
I had no idea who she was talking about because I hadn’t heard the conversation. The woman had gone to use the bathroom, but the young woman at the desk knew what my mom was referring to and said, “Her bill will be $275.” Without skipping a beat, my mom said, “Do I have enough money?” I said yes and she paid the bill. We left before she came, it was in the bathroom. My mom was so happy. © 3b1gplusgrb / Reddit 
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© Fernando Losada Rodríguez / Wikimedia Commons, © CC BY-SA 4.0
- Our dog was hit by a car. A couple witnessed her get hit (did not hit her). They followed her to try and save her. After searching the woods, they could not find her.
Another random person noticed these people and asked what they were looking for. After explaining to this man they were looking for an injured dog, the man offered his hunting dog to track her scent. The dog ended up leading this group of strangers to our dog. They called me and then wrapped her up, and we met at the nearest vet emergency room.
After the shock of seeing our dog with a broken jaw and protruding eye, the couple said to us, “I know you are young, and I know what it’s like to be young, we can help pay for this.” The whole thing restored our faith in humanity. Our dog is alive and kicking after almost a year, but not without the complete kindness of strangers. © turnipsedith / Reddit - I was having a really tough time in my new waitressing job, and on one shift, no one bothered to tell me the table numbers had been changed, so I was unaware of the new seating plan. Taking food to the wrong tables, and getting frustrated no one seemed to know what was happening, my manager suddenly stormed out, grabbed the plates from me, and shouted at me to go back into the kitchen and be useful for once.
I was really upset and felt so mortified as it was in front of a very busy restaurant/tearoom, and as my manager began to storm off, a little old lady stood up, told the manager what a piece of work she was and that she needed to buck up her ideas. She then came up to me, said I was doing a fine job, and gave me a proper nana hug. I could have cried. © Curious-Resource-962 / Reddit - I was in an elevator all dressed up a couple of hours before my wedding. There was a guy who walked into the elevator, he looked at me and said, “Are you the groom?” I replied with, “Yeah.” Then he said, “You look calm, that means you’re doing the right thing.”
And that’s exactly what I needed to hear to start the best day of my life. Thank you, elevator guy. © TaliasMithevallir / Reddit 
© Gowrirajamanickam01 / Wikimedia Commons, © CC BY-SA 4.0
In college, I went through a deep depression and sadness and was working as a housekeeper for a Comfort Inn over the summer break, which turned out to be an incredibly physically demanding job. I feel like the summer months of manual labor, totally alone for most of the day, gave me the time to work through some tough emotions.
Anyway, one day I was finishing up a room, hot and sweaty in the stifling heat (they didn’t air condition the hallways, just the rooms), and was completely exhausted and filthy. While loading the garbage onto my trolley, 2 beautiful men (sparkling eyes, well-dressed, skin so dark and smooth, beautiful big smiles) heading out of their room stopped and sang me a gorgeous acapella song, the texture and resonance of their voices echoing down the long empty hallway was unreal.
Turns out they were singers on their way to a performance. I will never forget that experience. It was about 12 years ago, but I still remember the way it felt to have someone know how much a little kindness and beauty can lift a spirit. © Manic_Sloth / Reddit- My first wife abandoned us when my son was an infant. It was rough, but I survived.
One evening I was at dinner with some friends. I had to change the baby, there was no table in the men’s room. I asked a lady leaving the lady’s room if it was empty, and she checked for me and gave me the okay. While I was trying to get my diaper bag sorted, she came up and offered to change him.
I told her I had it, but she insisted and put her arm around me. I’d been holding in a breakdown the whole time, and she saw right through it. I cried for a minute while a total stranger changed my infant son, thanked her profusely, and went back to dinner with my friends carrying a little less weight on my shoulders. No clue who she was, but she was an angel to me that night. © PrintError / Reddit - My son was probably 2 or 3, and we went to the mall. My son liked looking at displays and stuff. There was a model train set in a case that you could put $1 in and watch them go around for a while. I was pretty broke and never had cash on me. He was content just looking at the display. A group of loud mall teens went past us. One of them came back, put a dollar in the machine, and said, “I always liked watching trains too,” then hurried off back to his friends. My son lit up. I never would have expected that action from a stranger, let alone a teen with his friends in a mall. © ess0ess / Reddit