There is a banana

This made my day. I was aggravated this morning. I was sitting in my coworker's office and the phone rang. I have a tendency to hate my phone. I narrowed my eyes at it in disgust.

To my surprise, it ended up being the funniest phone call I have ever received.

It was a colleague whose office is upstairs.

"I'm not going to make it in today," he said. "I was hoping you or someone in the office could do me a favor."

"Sure," I said, and reached for my pen to write down the information.

"Inside my office, there is a microwave," he said. "On top of the microwave, there is a banana."

I  stopped. The paper read "[Person's name]--office--microwave--banana." Odd.

"Okay..." I said.

"The banana is ripe. But it's only going to be ripe until about the end of today. And then it's going to turn to mush."

I tried not to laugh. I had absolutely no idea where this was going.

I nodded, even though it could not be seen.

"I'm going to need someone in the office to eat the banana," he said. "Maybe for a snack, or part of their lunch. It's a perfectly good banana, I'd just hate to see it go to waste."

Definitely not what I had expected. He had called into the office solely for this purpose. To offer a banana.

The entire exchange brightened up my day and made me loathe my phone slightly less.

Offering a free banana, an awesome act of kindness.

"Thank You"

It seems to be that the simplest acts of kindness can be the hardest and also the most significant.  At its core, saying "Thank you" is nearly effortless.  We say it for nearly everything.  A piece of candy, a tissue, a use of stapler, transferring a call.  Yet when the thanks is important, it can be nearly too daunting to manage.

I finally said "Thank you" to someone last week.  A mere stranger that I never forgot.  I had thought about it for months--well over a year.  I had meant to do it, but the thought of facing this person that I owed such gratitude shadowed my courage and kept me away.

I'm not sure what I expected out of it.  I didn't expect to see him at all, but he was there, working at the same restaurant.

I told him thanks.  And it was as if I gave him everything.

It is a unique past experience that he and I share, which upped the ante of thanks.

But at the base of it, giving thanks can be monumental.

I didn't think it would affect him.  Saying thanks was for me.  But it meant more to him than anything I could have fathomed.

Saying "Thank you." An invaluable act of kindness.