Kindness Korner: Traffic jam and air conditioning jam invite random act of kindness opportunity

As cars begin to slow down on the freeway, the impending doom of a traffic jam sets in. But what if there was also a jam in your vehicle’s air conditioning on a particularly hot day?

Parked on the 5 Freeway in halted traffic due to a brush fire, a man exited his car and stood alongside to it, breathing heavily in the 100-degree heat. It appeared the car did not have functioning air conditioning as all windows were down, according to OCDE’s Kristin Rigby.

Another window suddenly rolled down, but this one belonged to a car parked next to the man. Two people called over to the man and they all began talking and shaking hands. Then, something out of the ordinary happened.

They invited him to sit in their air-conditioned car until traffic began moving.

“It was such a wonderfully kind thing to watch,” Rigby told the Newsroom. “It really was a great random act of kindness, and we got to talk about with our kids, who were in the car with us.”

Kindness can be inserted everywhere, even in not-so-kind situations. Let’s take a look at some additional acts you’ve shared with us:

“A little girl asked me if she can trade my bucket, so of course I was happy to trade my bucket with her.”

“My mom has been gone from work for a week and isn’t supposed to be back to work until Tuesday, but she brought me to her work for children at work day.”

“We helped out at the Marriott nearby, collecting the food trays.”

“One of my students told me the substitute for another teacher made the lessons interesting. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of that comment.”

“The lady in front of us at Costco saw that we were only buying movie tickets and she had a huge basket of groceries, so she let us go in front of her, which was great since we were trying to get a movie. So kind!”

We’re currently sitting at 16,158 acts of kindness. Keep it up!


We’ll be featuring stories here as part of the One Billion Acts of Kindness initiative, so be sure to share yours at kindness1billion.org. And don’t forget to help us reach the goal of one billion kind acts by using the hashtag #kindness1billion on social media.