After school, I decided to head to the gym. Along the drive, I noticed a van stopped in the first lane of the two-lane road with its caution lights on. I turned my car around and parked in the car dealership that was nearby and I ran down to go see if there was anything I could do.

The two occupants rolled down their window revealing an elderly grandmother and presumably her granddaughter in the driver’s seat.

Grandmother: “Our gas gauge is broken, and we ran out of gas!”

Me: “There’s a gas station a few intersections away. I’ll push you there.”

They put the van into neutral and I started to rock the van back and forth and then started to push it down the road.

I got to the first intersection and I was certainly starting to feel it. At this point, another young man dressed in cowboy attire hopped out of his mother’s car and joined in helping me push. We were nearing the gas station when another two men who were working construction nearby hopped in to help push, as well. With four fellas pushing, the going was easy and we soon got them parked next to a gas pump.

The granddaughter got out of the vehicle, thanked us all, and tried to give us some money but we told her to instead just fill up the van. I shook each man’s hand and thanked them for joining in.

As I walked back to my truck, I smiled nearly the whole way, glad to see the community snowball effect of goodness that I had just witnessed. To see others go out of their way to help someone in need really warmed my heart and restored my faith in humanity, even if it was just a little!

I work at a well-known but smaller size retail store. This morning, three girls came in and bought the stuff to make homemade macaroni and cheese from scratch.

In conversation, I told them that’s the one thing I just can’t seem to make.

A couple of hours, later they came back in with a big plate of BBQ and a huge side of mac and cheese. They said it was because I was so nice and that the store was open on the fourth of July.

That absolutely made working today worth it.

This story is part of our Fourth-Of-July-themed roundup!

Want to read the next Fourth-Of-July-themed roundup story? Click here!

Want to read the Fourth-Of-July-themed roundup? Click here!

A mother and her bride-to-be daughter were in to look at the wedding cake they’d ordered for the wedding that was scheduled in two days. Seeing a cake on the counter, the bride started ranting and raving about how this cake was wrong and it wasn’t at all what she ordered. She then proceeded to smash the cake with her fists.

Well, she was right. It was nothing like she ordered. It was what another couple had ordered for their wedding.

The police let her clean her hands before they put on the handcuffs.

I have submitted a few stories about my father-in-law, including this one. My father-in-law is a pretty smart man, especially when it comes to anything construction, and the company he has worked with for several decades really values him.

This story happened back in the early 1970s when he was much younger and my father-in-law would never dream about doing this now.

He was on a job site near a swamp where an alligator was hanging out. My father-in-law always had pets of all kinds and loved to feed anything that came near him. He would bring extra lunch and raw chicken for this almost two-foot-long alligator. This alligator was the darling of the crew and everyone really loved seeing him.

Also on this job site was a thief. My father-in-law would gladly lend out his expensive tools or even give them away to those who really needed them. Apparently, someone on the job site decided to just break into his truck and take the tools without asking and never returned them. My father-in-law bought a new lock and later came back to the truck to find it broken off and another expensive tool gone. This really ticked him off, so he decided to make sure that thief never did it again.

First, my father-in-law backed his truck up in front of a briar patch — very prickly thorny bushes that you don’t want to get into. Next, he went and found the alligator, put him in the back of his truck along with some chicken, and then closed the door.

It took but two hours before the crew heard yelling and screaming from the parking area. They came running and found a very scared and scratched-up man in the bushes and an angry alligator coming out of the back of the truck. The alligator walked back to the swamp, hissing at the thief along the way. The thief, knowing he got caught and looking quite ashamed of himself, went off to get some bandaids for his scratches. There was never any talk about it, but nothing was ever stolen again from anyone on the site.

The alligator still came up to my father-in-law every day at lunchtime waiting to be fed and eventually brought along some friends. My father-in-law said the hardest part about finishing that job was saying goodbye to his “friends.” Every time he was in the area, even decades later, he would stop by that part of the swamp and feed the alligators there. He would actually sit on the bank next to them and they didn’t react at all. There was one that he swore was his old friend that was eight feet long the last time he saw it.

Related:
This Lesson Really Stings, Part 3
This Lesson Really Stings, Part 2
This Lesson Really Stings

Me: “Hi! Grande triple one-pump mocha?”

Customer: “What? Triple?”

Me: “Oh, you didn’t have a one-pump mocha with an extra shot?”

Customer: “I did have a mocha with one pump, but triple?”

Me: “Okay, so no extra shot. Give me just a sec and I’ll remake this for you.”

The customer has a dejected look.

Me: “All right, here’s that one-pump mocha!”

Customer: “Oh, well, I did ask for an extra shot.”