The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.
He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn’t be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter.
“She told him, `No, I’m paying for it,”’ recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. “He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn’t, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears.”
At Kmart stores across the country, Santa is getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn’t afford, especially toys and children’s clothes set aside by impoverished parents.
Before she left the store Tuesday evening, the Indianapolis woman in her mid-40s had paid the layaway orders for as many as 50 people. On the way out, she handed out $50 bills and paid for two carts of toys for a woman in line at the cash register.I want to be able to do this for people. I remember my mum scrimping and saving when my brother and I were kids, especially around Christmas every year, and she always made it magical, but I remember always seeing the strain in her face when she had unexpected bills to pay and little money left for the week. We weren’t dirt poor by any means, but I always thought that I wish I could make things easier for her. And so I want to be able to make things easier for people who could use a break.
I wish I had the money to do what this woman is doing. <3
(Source: goodstuffhappenedtoday)
