The paper girl

[FYI for anyone who's interested: CM and I intend to keep making videos and posting them on the weekends, but I'm not going to announce each and every one -- that would get tedious quickly. So if you scroll down the page a bit, in the right column under the heading "Nifty Places" you should see a link called "Adventures in DS Surgery." This will contain the full playlist of all my DS-related videos on YouTube. (Or just click this link if you're too lazy to scroll.)

That's all. We now return you to your irregularly-scheduled shenanigans.]

Have I done any good in the world today?
Have I helped anyone in need?
Have I cheered up the sad
And made someone feel glad?
If not, I have failed indeed.

--Will Thompson

From the time we moved to Utah until I got into college, my siblings and I had part-time jobs. (It was the only way we could get reliable pocket money to spend or save; Mom, as a newly single parent, had no extra money to provide allowance, especially for six kids.) At one time or another, every one of us had a paper route or helped a sibling deliver papers. Most of the time we walked the route, delivering copies of the Daily Herald to addresses along Apple Avenue, a steeply-inclined road in the Tree Streets neighborhood of Provo.

My sister Julie was still in grade school when she started delivering on the route. At most of the houses she would simply drop the paper on the front porch, or leave it in a designated plastic cubbyhole next to the mailbox. But at one particular house she would stop, walk through the carport and up a few steps to the kitchen door, and knock. A voice from inside would call, "Come in!" At that house, Julie hand-delivered the paper to Mrs. Muhlestein, a housebound older woman whose health problems made it difficult for her to pick up the newspaper from her porch. I think they first became acquainted when Julie realized that Mrs. Muhlestein was distantly related to our cousins, who shared the same last name. Julie would spend a few minutes each day visiting with Mrs. Muhlestein -- usually talking about the news or what was going on at school -- before she headed out to deliver more papers. It got to be a regular thing.

And then Mrs. Muhlestein died. I can't remember how Julie found out, but I do remember that she attended the funeral. Members of Mrs. Muhlestein's family were clustered near the door of the meetinghouse, greeting friends and neighbors who had come to pay their respects. Since none of them recognized Julie, they asked her who she was.

Julie said something like, "Oh, I just delivered the newspaper."

This caused a minor sensation among the Muhlestein family members. Someone said, "Everybody! Come see! It's the paper girl!" And they gathered around her and told her about how much their mother had loved her visits, how she'd looked forward to the knock at the door from the girl who delivered her the news. "You were her window on the world," they told her.

This week I've been thinking a bit about influence -- not just the way other people influence us, but sometimes the way we influence others unawares. Julie didn't set out to be a bright spot in anyone's day. She was just doing her job. But she wanted to make sure she did her job well, and that meant doing something extra for a customer who needed help. It wasn't hard, and it didn't take much of her time, but unbeknownst to her that little daily act made a huge positive difference in another person's life.

Julie's story actually makes me feel a lot less stressed about helping others. I think we often feel like we have to perform huge, heroic acts to make a difference for good, but those grand opportunities to act don't come along very often. Every day, though, it's possible to exercise patience with the brand-new supermarket checker, to show sympathy and kindness to a lonely stranger who needs to talk, to give someone you pass a smile, to drop a friendly note or a sincere compliment as you run errands. There are too many times I’ve worried so much about doing something perfectly that I haven’t done it at all. I'd forgotten that it doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to be done. In the words of Oscar Wilde, "The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention."

So if you're thinking about some small kindness you could do, let me encourage you to do it. Now, before it leaves your mind and the opportunity passes. Go and do something today.