Last week, after we had been experiencing abnormally warm temperatures here in the Pass, I took advantage of the opportunity to not have to plug my car in overnight.
Then of course, as luck would have it, as we live in Alberta and we can never have stable weather for any extended period of time, the snow came back Friday evening, and everything went back to normal.
At one point on Sunday, I went to my window after having realized that I had not plugged my car in since the weather had gotten bad again.
When I looked through my window, I witnessed one of my neighbours sweeping the large drift of snow off of my car, scraping my windshield, and plugging the car in.
I contemplated opening my patio door and yelling “thank you” to him from across the parking lot, but didn’t want to startle him or look like a crazy person.
Instead I made a mental note to thank him the next time I saw him, for having done such an unnecessarily kind thing for someone he didn’t know.
The next day when I ran into him in the parking lot, I thanked him for doing me such a favour, and he responded by saying “it was no big deal, just thought I would do something nice for someone else since I was out there already.”
It made me happy to think there are actually people in the world who do things for other people, having no agenda other than to improve someone’s day.

It reminded me of the night that I came home around midnight and spent the next half hour sweeping snow off of every car in the parking lot.
It was not a particularly cold night, and I started by sweeping the snow off of the cars parked on either side of me.
Then I decided to do the same for the three cars parked in front of me, and it continued down that line of cars, before resulting in me going to every vehicle on the lot.
It occurred to me about ten cars in that it might be pointless to be doing what I was, as it would likely just snow again overnight and cover everyone’s windows back up, or that they wouldn’t actually notice that anything had been done when they got in their car in the morning.
I quelled that concern by telling myself it didn’t matter whether or not they noticed that someone had done this for them, the point was not to get recognition for doing someone a favour, but simply to do the favour because I could and because I would like someone to do the same for me.
So when I saw my neighbour taking time out of his day to warm up my car for me, when he had no call to do so, it made me feel like I wasn’t the only crazy person who still enjoyed doing unnoticed favours for others.
It is a small joy to do a simple favour for another human being, and one that I hope many people are familiar with.
Love, Kimberley