A Ripple of Kindness Brings Books

I do know the difference between a random act of kindness and a random act of charity.

Paying for coffee for everyone in line at Starbucks is a random act of kindness.
Refilling the doggie water bowls that dot the sidewalk of my local downtown is a random act of kindness.
Helping to carry someone's grocery bags to the car is a random act of kindness.

It's all good.


As part of the Yahoo! Motherboard, I'd been given $100 in seed money from Yahoo! to begin my ripple of kindness. So I sat there at Starbucks, clutching a stack of How Good Grows cards to give to recipients of my kindness. I looked at each customer as they walked up and wondered when I should begin. Her! I'll pay for her! Him! I'll pay for him. And her! And them!

It would have been so easy - and so much fun - to start ripples of kindness right there in that Starbucks line, but my thoughts kept turning to the shy little girl in my son's 1st grade class.

I wanted to give her the gift of reading.

She's quite a bit older than my son and still, for her the English words do not come easily. I think of her sometimes when I'm sitting with my boys at home, sharing the pleasure of reading together. If only I could beam her beside me when my boys and I journey into books.

It's not her fault. English is not her first language. And no, it's not that she speaks French or Mandarin; she is an ESL child from a disadvantaged, Spanish speaking family. I always root for the people behind the starting line and boy am I rooting for this little girl!

So I left the strangers in the coffee shop to buy their own coffee and decided to spend the hundred dollars on the shy first grader. I spoke with her teacher and we agreed that a gift of audio books would be ideal.

Goodbye random act of kindness, hello random act of charity.


I headed to my happy place which is a bookstore and shopped in earnest, filling a gift bag with books.

She has the books now. I wasn't there when she received them, but I heard her mother grew tearful. It was an unexpected gift. We told her it was a gift from someone who knows how much she loves books.

I hope it makes a bit of a difference for her.

I, in the meantime, have by no means depleted my reservoir of kindness. I may no longer have a hundred dollars in cash to burn, but I can still perform random acts of kindness every day. It doesn't have to cost a thing to bestow an act of kindness upon someone.

So if someone is kind to you, please keep the ripple of kindness (or charity!) going. I gave books to a little girl. What are you going to do?

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Akemi Bourgeois is mom to twin boys. They live in the Bay Area. She writes at Chalk and Cheese Chronicles and is the editor of Mad About Multiples. Also find her on the newly launched Technorati Women.