Category: Inspiration

A bookstore worker recently wrote this Facebook post describing an encounter with a “little old lady” who shocked everyone at the register. The post has since gone viral, and for good reason. Read it below.

Posted by Christine Turel

I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Anywho, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car ‘OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!’ She piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (‘Wooooosh’ she says, making a wave gesture with her hand.

Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favourite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.

Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.
He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, boldly takes them out of his hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with an intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says ‘you need chocolate.’ She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.

He keeps asking her ‘why are you doing this?’ She responds ‘Do you like Harry Potter?’ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.

Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:
‘It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.’

The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: ‘My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.’

I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: ‘I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.’ And leaves. And that is the story of the best customer I’ve ever had. Be kind to somebody today.

Kepco have been denied permission to mine Bylong! I am loving this news! Sincerest thank you and heartfelt Congratulations to all who worked hard and long to attain this victory!

The proposed Adani coal mine, which will be Australia’s biggest, has been granted unlimited access to groundwater by the Queensland government in a move farmers fear will drain huge amounts of water from the Great Artesian Basin.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/barbaric-adanis-giant-coal-mine-granted-unlimited-water-licence-for-60-years-20170404-gvd41y.html

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Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman

Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman shared the same agent, but didn’t know each other. One day Marty was introduced to Gene over the phone who announced he was writing a part for him in a screenplay called “Young Frankenstein.” Marty said “sounds great,” never expecting to hear about this again. After all, the film was just a notion, hadn’t been set up.

Nevertheless, Gene sent Marty pages, specifically the sequence wherein “Aye-gore” meets “Dr. Fronkenstein.” Many months later, this would be the first scene the two men shot together.

Gene Wilder was a man of his word. That turned him, in the words of Marty’s wife Lauretta, into “a saint.” That sainthood would be confirmed further down the road.

Gene went to bat for Marty since Mel Brooks “eyed” playing the role of the hunchback himself, but Wilder was steadfast. He only wanted Brooks to direct. By relegating leading man duties to Wilder and remaining behind the camera, Mel Brooks wrought his best work as a filmmaker.

Marty was nervous shooting his first scene in a major Hollywood movie with an established star that’d co-written the script, but Gene instantly approved of everything Marty was doing. This emboldened Marty to pause before delivering the classic line “What hump?” Mel Brooks kvetched “You can drive a truck through that pause,” but Gene and Marty melded into a comedy team with inimitable rhythm. Gene’s bewildered exasperation got the laugh after “What hump?” when he said: “Let’s go.”

Marty felt relaxed enough to improvise “walk this way” as a joke for the crew. Mel instructed him to “leave it in.” Marty explained he was just “screwing around” and how it was “a terrible old joke.” Mel Brooks decreed “it’s funny” and, as Marty would later attest, his instincts were always right.

Gene had trouble completing takes without cracking up. Marty found it lovely to have a leading man that found his fellow actors so funny. Marty also had insight: Since this was the first produced screenplay Wilder had co-written… he was also enjoying his own words.

Marty was floored by the finished product, especially Gene’s performance. On set Wilder was an actor struggling to get through takes without laughing, but on the big screen, playing the title role… Gene Wilder had reached comic nirvana.

Marty recounted how Wilder once mentioned that he never wanted to “act like some asshole movie star” and never did. Marty was thrilled when Gene told him he was writing another part for him, this time in “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” which Wilder directed on Feldman’s home turf of the UK.

Many years later, Marty passed away at the age of 48. I didn’t see Gene Wilder at the funeral, but decades later Marty’s widow told me a story that confirmed her appraisal of the man. It’s something that’s never ever been written. Wilder called Lauretta after the memorial, concerned not just about her emotional well-being, but fiscal.

“Do you own your home?” asked Wilder. Lauretta replied “no, why?” “Because if you need me to,” Wilder offered, “I’ll buy it for you.”

“Virtue is the truest nobility.” ~ Miguel de Cervantes

Gene Wilder played many characters in his lifetime, but the best role he ever played was himself.