File photo by Quynh Do

From the Guardian comes the story of a man who at his most vulnerable received commendable kindness from a source all unlooked to.

Part of the paper’s “Kindness of Strangers” series, the report tells the story of Richard Munoz, who broke his ankle playing basketball and needed corrective surgery which left him on crutches.

Living in an urban environment, a typical day in the life of Mr. Munoz involved a lot of walking beyond the door of his flat, where he says there lay a park routinely occupied by groups of teenagers.

Every day after school, these teenagers would assemble there to smoke cigarettes and make snide remarks at occasional passersby. Munoz never got involved, but the route to the corner store was through that park, and though he could order groceries for delivery to his unit, there were times when certain small things were needed for expediency.

And it was pursuant to one such need that he entered the park on his crutches one day coming home from the corner store with milk only to see the gaggle of teenagers there. Attempting to pass by without rousing them, he heard one call something out to him—the particulars of which Munoz did not catch.

He tried to ignore them, but his pulse quickened as a few stood up and began approaching him.

To his surprise, they came to offer a helping hand with his bags, which he accepted nervously.

“A lot of people were kind to me during that injury experience—and a few weren’t kind at all—but by far the most helpful were those teens,” Munoz wrote.

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Throughout the rest of his recovery, the park-loiterers were a constant helping hand, taking his garbage out, letting him cut in front of them in line at the store, and regularly asking if he needed a hand with anything.

By the end of the experience, he wrote a letter to the school administrators explaining the good deeds of the teenagers and suggesting they be recognized for their kind efforts, though the author admitted he didn’t know if the letter had been received.

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“I’d been bullied a lot in high school and the experience helped me resolve a lot of the residual wariness I had about groups of teenagers,” wrote Munoz. “It also showed me that we can’t define strangers from the small glimpses we see of them, even if we see them every day. Those teens were more than their stereotype—and I’m grateful for it.”

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