Someone goes out their way for me on a cold Monday morning

Its amazing how the small things that someone does can affect you (positively). Each morning I take the commuter rail to Boston to work. I walk to the very far end of the platform (about ~3 city blocks...it's a long way to the end or to the front of the train). Today, when I got to the end of the platform to wait, a stranger came to me and said, "I didn't think you would ever stop....you dropped this out of your pocket." It was a fed ex package slip I had in my coat pocket that I was looking at when I first got on the platform. It dropped out and this gentleman followed me all the way to give it to me and then turned around to walk back to his "normal" spot which was clearly towards the back not the front (so 2 or 3 blocks he walked out of his way). I thanked him several times and told him he did a good deed and then he waved. I thought for an extra moment about this act of kindness this man did for me because of something one of the students said in our last class when he asked / remarked to the class, "if we do all this good stuff who will do stuff for us." The answer is that first many people and organizations have already done so much for us such as Citizen's, RandomKid, Costco, Fidelity and many more to make this class special for the kids. And secondly, like "paying it forward" it is a "leap of faith" that by helping someone and being kind, that someone / somewhere down the road will return the favor. I know this to be the case and this class has reinforced this in so many ways in terms of the people and things that have happened to me, the kids and others as a result. But from time to time it is fair and okay to ask the question and to need to be reminded every so often as this student did.