I don't tell this story to receive praise or to make me seem better than anyone else in the world, in fact the reason I wanted to share this moment with you is quite the opposite. I tell this story to remind everyone that every time we interact with another person we could potentially be making a real and lasting  impact on their life. I know that this conversation that could have easily gone the other way, I'm sure there are people that have probably felt slighted or hurt by me in what I thought  was a passing interaction. I am so very glad that this was about a time I got it right.

Before the Secret Star Jam concert last Wednesday night I went outside the theater for a , well, lets just say a break. There were people making there way inside and I tried to find a place to have a moment alone I realized that a woman was changing direction and heading straight for me. I stopped to say hello and she said, "I don't mean to bother you I just have something I have been needing to tell you for years."

I couldn't imagine what was going to follow an opening line like that but knowing myself I worried that it might not be good. She continued and told me that many, many years ago I met her at a Toby Keith at the Turning Stone Resort and "I saved her life."

I admit when she began to talk I was having a hard time remembering the night but it did start to come back to me. I was upstairs waiting to go into a pre-concert radio room where there would be some food and drink and a private performance from the opening acts that night including "Trailer Choir" who did a song I so loved at the time, "Rockin' The Beer Gut".

This woman was sitting alone reading  and I struck up a conversation with her, she told me that her husband was downstairs gambling and she came up to sit alone because she was very tired and not having the best of days. I remember her being a sweet lady and when it came time for us to go into the radio room I asked her to come along.

Proctors Theatre
Google Street View
loading...

Now outside of Proctors many years later this same lady said that I and my then girlfriend now wife Andrea, were so nice to her and made her feel special. I said, "I'm glad we could do that" and began to end our current conversation when she continued. "You don't understand, I had just been diagnosed with MS (It wasn't until this point that I realized she was walking with a cane)  I was so tired and in a really bad place mentally at that moment. In general I had been trying to raise myself out of depression and find a reason to even go on... your act of kindness what just what i needed, your small act of kindness made me want to go on, you saved my life."

I wrote this today is to remind us all of  what she wanted to remind me, that even the smallest gesture of kindness can be life saving. Maybe one person can't save the world, but one person can save a world.

When given the option, be kind.

More From 107.7 WGNA