I am on vacation in England. I order a crepe from a street vendor, and we chat amicably for a few minutes while he makes the crepe. I’m an American, and he’s from Bangladesh, and we both laugh that, as an American, I’m the only guy I know who likes cricket.

He hands the crepe over, I thank him, and I go on my way. It takes me a few moments before a panic comes over me. I quickly double back and arrive back at the crepe stand.

Me: “I forgot to pay you!”

Vendor: “You paid me with conversation and a shared love of cricket.”

He didn’t accept my money, but I did go back there every day for the rest of my trip and continued our conversation while I enjoyed every flavor of crepe he offered.

And yes, every time after that, I did pay!

In our country, there a lot of people who don’t have bank accounts. Therefore, to get credit on their cell phones they need to buy prepaid cards and ‘load’ the credit on to them. Doing this can be an elaborate procedure, especially on older phones.

A lot of older customers have older phones, usually hand-me-downs from younger relatives who have found ways to upgrade.

I work in a phone kiosk in a mall, selling the prepaid phone cards along with other phone-related merchandise. A really old lady approaches me and starts speaking to me in very slow Tagalog.

Old Lady: “I… can… buy… load… for the phone?” 

Me: “Yes, I can sell that to you.”

This old lady then opens a plastic bag (she doesn’t have a purse) and starts putting out smaller bags, each containing coins. 

Old Lady: “I’ve… been… saving!”

I can tell from her accent that Tagalog is not her normal dialect. She actually sounds like she speaks my home dialect.

Me: “Excuse me, but do you speak Cebuano?”

The old lady’s eyes go wide and she suddenly explodes in a flurry of Cebuano.

Old Lady: “Yes, I do! Oh, The Lord has blessed me with you! I don’t like speaking Tagalog but I moved to the city, and I have to learn and usually my daughter helps me but she works two jobs now and I need to help her by helping myself and the least I can do is figure out my phone and…”

She continues on like this in a long, single, running sentence. Luckily, I have similar fast-speaking matriarchs in my family, so I am used to processing verbal information at this speed. At some point, I do need to steer the conversation back to why she is here, though.

Me: “—so, ma’am. You want to buy load for your phone? How much?”

Old Lady: “I’ve been saving! I think I have 500 pesos. Is that enough to call home?”

This is about $9 USD. It usually isn’t enough to do too much, but I get the feeling I am looking at the amount that this woman has been saving for a long, long time.

Me: “You need to call Cebu?” *Our home island.*

Old Lady: “Yes.”

Me: “I can set you up for a 500 peso deal where you can call Philippine numbers unlimited for a month.”

Old Lady: “A whole month! Bless you! I thought I would be getting maybe a phone call or two? One time I bought a 250-peso card and I only got one phone call.”

I didn’t say it, but sadly whoever this old lady spoke to before must have conned her. As for me, I also am telling a little lie; she would not be able to get a whole month of unlimited calls for 500 pesos. It actually costs double that, but I am not about to leave this poor old lady without a means to call home when she’s alone and scared in the big city.

Me: “I have a special card you can use, ma’am.”

She buys the card and then holds it in her hand, almost protectively. This $9 single piece of card in a plastic wrap is likely the single most expensive purchase she’s made in a while.

Old Lady: *Nervous and slow.* “I… don’t see too well. I can’t see all the numbers.”

Me: “Shall I add the load to your phone?”

Old Lady: *Quick and excited again.* “Yes! Bless you! The Lord sent me to you today!”

I go through the over-complicated process of adding the money on to her phone, and then selecting the package she will need to get unlimited calls.

Me: “You should be able to call home now.”

This old lady then reaches into the same plastic bag and shows me a phone number.

Old Lady: “I can’t see all the numbers. Can you call this number for me?”

My heart breaking, I decide I am going to make sure this old lady never has problems talking to her relatives back home ever again.

I save the number into her very old phone, and then I figure out how to speed dial the number using the minimal amount of button presses. I manage to set it up so that she simply has to press three buttons a second apart to be able to auto-dial the number she gave me.

I explain this process to her:

Old Lady: “Young people! Really you’re so smart! You speak Tagalog, and English! And you know the phones! When I was young we just knew about fetching the water and cooking rice. So smart! Young people are so smart!”

She tries it out, and it works!

For the next hour she sits down next to my kiosk and talks to her sister and tells her about all of her adventures since she moved from her rural province into the big city. She is overjoyed and talking furiously. She keeps coming up to me to ask if she will run out of time soon, and I happily remind her that she can keep talking for thirty more days and she still wouldn’t run out.

After her call she thanks me and eventually leaves, with me smiling from ear to ear.

Since that day she comes back every month, with a bag of coins and asking for me to upload it to her phone. I don’t even count the bag of coins anymore; I know she’s good for it.

It can be scary for an older person from the country to move to the big city. If I could help her maintain a connection back to the home village, then that was what I was going to do. 

I look forward to her visits every month.

This story is part of the Best-Feel-Good-Stories Of-2023 roundup!

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Some years ago, when I was in my early twenties, my recently retired parents spent a month in New England (we are from regular England) and invited me to fly out and spend a week with them.

One day, my mother and I take a train to Boston to spend the day looking around the city. My mother is quite short (around 4’11”, but she insists she’s 5’2″ because she poofs her hair up) and has habitually worn the highest heels she can get, including while at work as a teacher. She makes running around after thirty six-year-olds on three-inch stilettos look easy! On this particular day, she has on ankle boots with a two-inch heel, which is what she considers a comfy walking shoe. I am wearing actual walking boots.

As we leave one tourist attraction, we realise we don’t know how to get to the next one we want to visit, though we know it’s some way across the city centre. (This was before smartphones were commonplace.) Fortunately, we soon spot a small, freestanding information kiosk — the little shack sort where the worker inside speaks to you through a window — and go over to ask for directions.

There is a young man in the kiosk yelling greetings to people who pass by and seemingly trying to attract interest, yet our walking up to his counter seems to really surprise him. 

Worker: “Whoa! There you are!”

Me: “Hi. Can you tell us how to get to Faneuil Hall, please?”

Worker: “Uhhhh… from here?”

I have it in me to say something sarcastic but rein it in.

Me: “Yes.”

He begins to give directions, but it quickly becomes very confusing, as he is referring to everything as “that place, you know”, and “that street where the thing is”. I try and stop him to ask for street names, but he suddenly leans out of the window and looks at my mother’s feet.

Worker: “Whoa! Were you going to walk there?”

Us: “Yes.”

Worker: “You can’t walk there in those shoes, lady; something’ll happen.”

Mum: “What do you mean? What’ll happen?”

Worker: “You’ll fall off them and die or something. I dunno, but you can’t walk that far in those heels. It won’t work.”

Mum: “I’ve been walking around in these all day.”

Worker: “No way! You just got out of your car.”

My mum and I glance at each other wondering what to do. We’re not sure where else we can get directions from, as it’s early on a weekday afternoon and the streets are pretty quiet apart from other tourists. We haven’t been near a car since my dad dropped us off at the train station, so I’m not sure why the guy thought we’d just got out of one.

Me: “Look, can you just let us know how far away it is and we’ll decide if we can walk it?”

Worker: “You can’t walk it. Nobody can walk it. It’s too far. Where are you even from that you think you can walk that far?”

Mum: *Flustered* “We’re from England.”

A look of dawning delight crosses the man’s face.

Worker: “Where the Moomins are from?!”

I know that the Moomins are definitely not from England, but it seems like I might get somewhere if I agree, so I say yes.

Worker: “Okay, then, I’ll let you walk there. Maybe you won’t fall off. Here.”

He then produces a leaflet with a little map of the city centre and a pen, circles where we are and where Faneuil Hall is, and draws a line suggesting the best route. It takes him about twenty seconds, and though he doesn’t say any directions to us, it is pretty clear from the map where we need to go. We thank him.

As we walk away, my mother turns to me looking very serious.

Mum: “[My Name], do you know what weed smells like?”

Me: “Yes, like that guy.”

Mum: “Just promise me that if you ever do it, you won’t do it at work.”

I promised, and we had a nice time at Faneuil Hall.

CONTENT WARNING: Dark Humor Involving Animals

For those unfamiliar with Mexican culture, you can find taco stands on pretty much every street corner in densely populated areas. I’m at one of such stands in a city I’ve just moved to, with a colleague I’ve just met.

Me: “It’s kind of weird.”

Colleague: “What’s weird?”

Me: “In my hometown, you’d find stray dogs begging for scraps at every food stand. But I don’t see any here.”

Colleague: *Matter-of-factly* “We have no stray dogs in [City].”

Me: “Yeah, I can tell.”

Colleague: “We do have many places where you can get the cheapest tacos in the state. You do the math.”

Me: “What does that have to do with… Oh… Oh, no…”

I was recently selling pastries at the local Greek festival. The biggest seller was, of course, baklava, but there had been some kind of mix-up and there were like three thousand more pastries than we needed, so we decided not to sell pieces in anything less than groups of three.

Of course, we got some people asking for individual pieces of baklava despite the sign saying that, nope, we don’t sell that. Most of them just grumbled a bit and then bought three — because the more baklava the better!

But this one customer couldn’t seem to understand.

Customer: “One piece of baklava.”

Me: “We sell them in portions of three.” *Points to the sign*

Customer: “No… one.”

Me: “I can’t sell you one. The smallest portion is for three.”

The customer tutted and left, but then they came back a few minutes later to talk to my coworker.

Customer: “One piece of baklava. Just one.”

Coworker: “We only sell them by the three.”

Customer: “No! I want one! Just f****** one!”

Coworker: “I can give you one piece, but I have to charge you the same for three.”

Customer: “I’m not f****** paying for three!”

Coworker: “Then can you please leave? You’re holding up the line.”

The customer then came back a third time, practically hyperventilating! I explained once again that we didn’t sell individual pieces.

Customer: “Someone said you would.”

The same coworker stepped in again, but instead of leaving, the customer totally freaked out and yelled a bunch of incoherent stuff about how they “don’t understand why you can’t just sell single pieces”, barged around the counter, threw a couple of dollars at me, grabbed a piece of baklava, and ran off.