My wife, our two kids under 4 and I were in the post office a few weeks ago. We have to go there every month to pay various fees. I was being served when an old man in his eighties, with obvious, significant health issues, was waiting to pay his electricity bill. He was struggling to walk on a walking stick, and his hands and arms were shaking all the time. I knew by feeling that the old man was in trouble. After asking, I figured out that the old man's problem was that he was 20 cents short.

The lady behind the counter had the old man in such a state, looking for a further 20 cents, and he was shaking, obviously looking upset. But instead of letting the man go, she insisted that if his bill wasn't going to be paid in full, the electricity company would probably give a fine on his next bill for unpaid fees.

Hearing this, I got really upset. So I went over and asked the lady behind the counter to give ALL of his money back to the old man and I handed her my debit card and paid the bill for him.

The old man was asking “why are you doing this?” as he began crying. I told him because it was the right thing to do. He thanked me over and over and smiled at my two kids on his way out of the post office.

The best part of this event was that the old man walked out of the post office and straight to Woolies and bought a full basket of food, which he wouldn't have been able to buy had I not done that at the post office.

It happened that we met this old man again in our community.

Our family decided to help improve the old man's situation.

It was an ordinary school day. I was in the fifth grade. Children like me who didn’t live close enough to go home for lunch brought their paper wrapped meals and gathered under the shade of a tree.

Such lunches usually consisted of a sandwich, hard-boiled egg, cookie and a piece of fruit. If a schoolmate’s sandwich or cookie appeared to be more appetizing than your own, you tried to negotiate a trade. I always tried to trade something I didn’t want anyway--a mashed-bean sandwich or an overripe banana. It never occurred to me to trade a slice of Mama’s Old Kentucky walnut cake for my schoolmate’s offering of a boring-looking sweet cookie, even though I could see longing in the exchanger’s eyes.

Sometimes Mama put two pieces of fruit in my lunch package, one to be eaten at morning recess if I was hungry. Quite often, though, I saved that piece of fruit as my bargaining piece for a sugary doughnut or fried apple pie.

Unashamedly, I always examined the looks and quality of my fruit to see which piece was better and then offered my classmate the poorer, less attractive piece. I felt no guilty of selfishness. It was just a good trading sense.

That autumn day after the lunch-bringers had eaten their food, got rid of the wrappings and walked to various parts of the playground, I wandered under the shade of a maple, watching butterflies flying lazily southward. I was still hungry and Mama had put no fruit in my lunch that day.

I saw my classmate Stella coming up a path.

Without hesitation, Stella handed me the apple.

I had been in Cancun, Mexico for a week when I lost my bag in a shopping centre. My friend and I were occupied with taking photos in front of a mural (壁画) and forgot that one of my bags was dropped in a corner. When I realized, we had walked away for at least 10 minutes. We quickly retraced our steps to the place where it had been left. By then, it was nowhere to be found. “It can’t be gone. ” I told myself. We called the phone. It didn’t get through. We started asking people around the plaza, including the security guard. After hearing my story, they only shook their heads and looked at me with pity. “Oh no, no. This is Mexico. It’s already taken and you won't get it back. I’m sorry for you,” a man who spoke English said to me. My friend Marcela helped me turn on “Find My iPhone” from her phone. My hope was once again dashed when the results returned “this device is offline”. We sent a message to the phone and left a contact number, begging the person to give back my things. Nothing. At this point, we concluded that the person must have switched off my device. They did not have good intentions. Everything was truly gone.

We walked back to our hotel and the rest of the day passed gloomily. I felt guilty, sad and a mess. That bag contained not only my phone, but also new camera gear I had bought and most of my cash. I had two weeks left in Cancun as I was on a volunteering trip. Thankfully, I had a place to stay with the rest of my volunteer family who are the sweetest people. They comforted me and helped me look on the bright side. By then I had totally given up the idea of being able to get back my things.

Three days later, we suddenly received an unexpected call from a stranger.

I checked my bag and found all of my things were untouched.

As the children of circus performers, my brother and I would spend nine months out of the year traveling around the country with our parents when we were young. While on the road, we lived in a 26-foot-long trailer (拖车), filled with various costumes that our parents wore in their performances.

Even though costumes were an important part of our everyday life, we had never had a Halloween party until we were about six or seven years old.

But our first Halloween was so extraordinary that, decades later, we still clearly remember every detail of it. And each time we look back at it, we still feel as happy as millionaires—in a different way.

On that day, our parents first introduced us to the holiday. By the evening, they stopped our trailer in a field to begin the trick-or-treat festivities. Of course, there were no doors around to knock on. However, the trailer had everything our parents needed to show us what Halloween was all about.

First, our parents dressed up like a young couple when they asked us to go around to knock on the trailer's back door. When my brother and I made our way to the back door, they quickly changed their costumes to become an old couple to greet us there.

All night long, our parents mixed up the costumes that they wore in the performances and pretended to be other people. They wore crazy hats and adopted strange accents to go along with each costume. We thought Dad was a Frenchman when he had the yellow jacket on.

And what treats did we receive? Everything our parents had in the cabinets (柜子)!

So we promised that we would go home as soon as possible. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After we all got into the trailer, we started taking the treats out onto the floor. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

They’d been planning this forever. From her birth, most likely. Mya's mother, Helena loved hosting parties. And Aunt Beatrice loved birthdays. Together, they'd make her Sweet Sixteen a hundred times bigger, bolder, and brighter than it needed to be. They selected a theme every year and stuck to it. Her fourteenth had been the “Snow White” and her ninth had been the “Frozen”. They never told her what the theme was the day before. She'd just wake up her birthday morning, a brand new birthday outfit (一套服装) laid neatly on her dresser (an outfit related to the theme, of course) and she would open her door to see the adventure that lay ahead of her that day.

Mya had a few guesses as to what this year’s theme would be. A play on the words “Sweet Sixteen” was likely — a candy themed party, perhaps? But she’d had a baking party a few years ago — and Helena was anything but repetitive. Mya didn't have any interest in cars, so she doubted a sports-car party was on the menu. She’d tried to look through her mother’s purchase history online, but her mother had been careful enough to delete everything recent. So the only clue left was the birthday outfit she would receive the next morning.

May 1st, Mya woke. The bright sunlight begged her eyes to open and she loved the day that her birthday took place. It was always nice out on May 1st and it never rained. This morning was no different than her previous birthdays. She sat up in her bed and looked to her dresser before slipping out of bed and inspecting the outfit. She unfolded it and held it against her body, seeing how it was like. It reached down, just above the ankle. Mya dressed, eyed herself in the mirror and found it was not so much a pretty outfit as she had received before. It was totally one for blue-collar workers!