It looked like just a piece of plastic when he first saw it. Pete could easily have missed seeing it. After all, he had plenty to think about on his way to catch the bus to work that morning. It could easily have been hidden by the piles of snow. He just happened to glance that direction and there it was. He reached down to pick it up. As he turned it over the word iPod caught his eye. “Someone is really going to miss this!” he thought. “I wonder…” his thoughts trailed off as he examined the phone. Once on the bus, he had a better chance to look at it. It was wet from the snow and it didn’t look safe to turn it on. At first he wondered how he would return it if he couldn’t see who owned it. Later in the day, he finally was able to get it on. It took some investigating but he was able to find out that it belonged to a young girl, Debbie (not her real name). He was able to find the phone number of the girl’s father. “That’s what I’ll do!” he smiled to himself, as his plans for returning it began to form.
The second he walked in the door from work that afternoon, he couldn’t wait to tell his wife and show her the iPod. “I’m gonna make somebody happy tonight!” he told her with a big grin and light beaming from his eyes. He couldn’t wait to begin the process, hoping to return the iPod to its young owner. He called the number he found and talked to the dad. As he told the story, the dad got choked up. The father was so relieved to hear that it was found. He said his daughter Debbie had gotten it for Christmas just a couple weeks ago and was devastated that she lost it as she ran to catch the school bus that morning. They had no hope of finding it. But Debbie was not with her father that day so he gave Pete the phone number for Debbie’s mother.
It wasn’t Debbie’s mother who answered the phone but Debbie herself. Pete asked her, “Have you lost something today?”
With deep emotion her young voice said in disbelief, “Really?”
Pete asked again, “What did you lose today?”
Again in disbelief, she shakily uttered, “you found my iPod?”
“Yes,” was his reply.
“Do you want to talk to my mom?” She asked. She put her mom on the phone. Pete told Debbie’s mom how he found the iPod and where. Then he gave her directions so they could come pick it up.
Before he hung up the phone he added, “I want your daughter to remember this experience and pay the kindness forward to someone else some day.”
When the doorbell rang, Pete was expecting Debbie’s mother along with Debbie but the girl had come to the door alone.
“Thank you, thank you thank you…” she began, expecting to just get the iPod and then pay Pete for his kindness.
But Pete had other plans. “I want you to remember this incident” he said. “In the future I want you to pay it forward to help someone else.”
He picked up the iPod and gave it to her. She began to hand him a twenty dollar bill. He pushed it away and pulled out an envelope.
“You keep it and this is what I want you to do. This is your homework. I want you to go to this website on this envelope and look it up. I want you to read about it. The Dragonfly Project is important to me. You read about it and then I want you to take this money and send it to the Dragonfly Project.”
Debbi, gratefully turned to return to her mom waiting in the car, repeating “Thank You!” over and over again. She was about eleven years old, the age of Pete’s son when he died of brain cancer ten years earlier. Pete’s son was the reason The Dragonfly Project was started by another eleven year old eight years ago. Pete doesn’t own an iPod but he knows deeply what many of us don’t; that everyone deserves a second chance; even careless eleven-year-olds. He also knows that eleven-year-olds can make a difference; a difference that makes the world a better place.
This man Pete, happens to be my husband. I’m a lucky woman. Hans was our lucky son. And now Debbi is another young person lucky enough to have met him.
I invite you to consider Pete’s challenge with me. What if the next time someone in our life makes a stupid mistake, we offer them our kindness and then remind them to pass it on? We all make stupid mistakes every day; lost keys, errors in judgment and work; say the wrong things to our good friends. How about if instead of blame and shame, we think of a way to pay a kindness and then invite people to pay it forward? It couldn’t hurt and it might just work.
Epilogue: The Dragonfly Project was started by Anne Brooker in 2002 when she was eleven, to send condolence cards to people who are grieving. You can find out more at http://www.dragonflyproject.org
