The Kindness of Strangers

Listening To: Morning Calls- Dashboard Confessional
Random Thought of the Day: I wonder if I'm late for Chinese yet..

I've found that over the last few months, I've become more and more cynical. Although this newfound cynicism has its benefits, I find that I prefer the optimistic and more lighthearted perspective I had in the past. This weekend though, someone did something for me that reaffirmed that there are people in the world who will go out of their way to be amazingly kind to others, just because they can. And that, I think, has also made me believe that my wanting to be more optimistic is a well founded goal.

I went to the Grove with my friend this Saturday, because she's never been to Cheesecake Factory before, and she really wanted to try it. However, we had to walk over from the Beverly Center, because that's where we had been spending the day. By the time we even got into Cheesecake Factory, it was already past 10pm. After a 30 minute wait, we were seated on the balcony overlooking the Grove (albeit in a cranny where we could barely see off the edge of the rails). Thus, my friend decided she wanted to sit at a table right on the edge of the balcony, and asked a waiter if we could switch over to another section of the balcony. [note* Our first waiter looked like Hayden Christenson, and the two of us kept swooning every time he came by. It was a REALLY good incentive not to change tables, but in the end I'm glad we did]. Our new waiter was a complete goofball (as opposed to the first, who was a total charmer) and kept joking with us, which is always fun.

After our meal, it was already past 12am, and I suddenly realized that all the busses back to UCLA had stopped running. My friend and I then proceeded to spend the next half hour frantically calling people, anyone with a car, trying to get them to pick us up. However, all of them were either out partying (and not picking up their phones), sleeping, or home for the weekend. Throughout the bouts of panicked speed-dialing, our waiter kept popping by the table to check up on us, and finally offered to take us home, if we could find no other ride. At first, my friend and I were really skeptical and scared, because everyone has heard the horror stories- Girl meets stranger, stranger is all nice and charming and offers her a ride home, stranger rapes and kills girl. Finally though, faced with the option of either walking half a mile through dark streets that neither of us were familiar with to catch a bus that left in less than 20 minutes, we took up the waiter’s offer.

To both of our surprise and relief, the waiter, Jared, was really kind. The moment we got into his car [which he hastily cleaned as we stood by and told him ‘no really! its fine! you don’t need to clean it’] he asked us what music we listened to [he has everything. EVERYTHING.] and put on exactly what we wanted to listen to. Then, we chatted [it wasn’t awkward, strangely] all the way back to UCLA. I think he went in a huge loop out of his way to take us back, since he lived on Sunset, and we live… not on Sunset, but he refused to take any gas money, even when I tried to leave it in his car.

Seriously, Jared made my week. It’s so nice to know that not all people only do favors for others if they receive something in return. Jared, I hope you know that you’ve caused me to seriously reevaluate my outlook on people, and life. You are truly inspiring.