The Hummus Fairy
It all started at a 7-Eleven in west Texas. This is the way goodness often goes. No elaborate intention is set. No detailed business plan is hatched. An instinct just makes it past the gate of the soul and BOOM! All kinds of lives get changed.
Twin sisters on a road trip to receive their Covid-19 vaccination during the height of the pandemic pulled into a quick stop on the outskirts of their destination town in hopes of finding a bathroom. Entering the store trepidatiously, one asked, “Is there a facility available for public use?” So much was iffy then.
The young woman behind the counter, seemingly starved for human connection, answered exuberantly, “Oh, of course honey! It’s right back there,” she said pointing to the corner of the store. “There’s not ANYBODY in here. Help yourself!”
While the sister in need took off for the corner, the other, prompted by her inbred religious guilt, pulled a diet soda from the cooler and headed toward the counter to pay out. “That will be $2.31,” the cashier announced with the kind of twinkly eye typically reserved for chocolate cake. Handing the clerk a twenty, the Catholic at the counter smiled and said, “You keep the change.”
“Wait, what?” the employee responded in disbelief.
“Keep it, honey. That’s for you.”
The young girl shook her head while saying “Thank you.” Then she blurted, “This is gonna get me home tonight.”
A simple tip. A little thing. An act no doubt repeated by millions every day. But the story doesn’t end there.
When the follow-up Covid vaccine became available, the sisters once again made the trek from Dallas to Weatherford, Texas. Despite neither being directionally acute, they set their sights on the previously stumbled upon 7-Eleven hoping the buoyant young girl would again be at her register post. This time they had a plan.
Sure enough, they found both it and her.
“Do you by chance remember me?” the tipping twin asked when she entered the quick stop. The cashier (in what could only be assumed to be her resting joyful state) said, “Yes of course! You came in with your twin sister!”
“Can you come out to the car for a second with me to see her?”
“Sure, I would love to!” the cashier responded as she bounced around the counter. Together the two of them headed for the door.
When they reached the car, the sister sitting inside rolled down her window and handed the 7-Eleven employee a one-hundred-dollar bill. In shock, the grateful girl dropped to the asphalt on her knees.
This is how the twins’ purposeful pay-it-forward began.
Since 2021, the two sisters have given away around $80 a day. Every single day. For four years, and counting. That comes to somewhere near $300 a week, each. Thirty-thousand dollars a year, combined, to unsuspecting strangers. This is over and above what the women formally give to philanthropic organizations or how they tip according to customary rules. This is their no-write-off give. The cash they keep on hand to make some unknown other’s day. Neither sister is uber wealthy though both worked long and hard --and well --at significant careers. Yet they spend their days, post monthly paychecks, passing out twenties like evangelists disseminating holy roller revival pamphlets. They surprise the cart guys at grocery store, the postal worker in their driveway, their waiters and waitresses, the lawn guys and the nail girls.
They walk around with their eyes peeled for places to do good. And good, in return, puddles up around them. As it turns out, you can’t escape the ROI of giving.
Those on the receiving end of their kindness say repeatedly, “You don’t have to do that.”
“We know we don’t, but we WANT to,” both sisters say. “Honestly, it’s selfish. We do it because it gives us so much joy.”
The sisters have stories for days. There’s the stocker at Kroger who told them steaks were on sale in the back—he got three packs of T-Bones out of the deal. “Going home to put them on the George Foreman!” he said, beaming at the thought of what he would be preparing for his family later that night. There’s the Amazon driver who said the twenty he received when he hustled the package to the porch was his first tip ever, though he’d been driving for almost twenty years.
And then there’s the Salt Lake City Airport on-the-ground traffic cop doing his duty during massive construction. On a lap to pick up an old friend, one of the sisters rolled down her window and asked him where she should pull. The guy said, “Nowhere. Nobody can stop here. You’re going to have to go all the way back around.” So she did, and when she came back through and scooped up her friend, she rolled her window down again and motioned for the guy to come near. Reluctantly, he made his way.
She handed him a twenty with a smile.
Dumbfounded, he asked, “What’s this for?”
“You, doing such a great job in such a great way,” she said matter-of-factly.
“No way! I thought you were gonna yell at me!”
The stories grow wings every time the sisters tell them. That might be the best part of paying it forward—feel-good interest is earned each time you re-run it in your mind.
The twins’ extended family thinks they’re crazy. Throwing money around so haphazardly seems somehow irresponsible. Yet, helping others might be the most responsible thing a human being can do. “I’ve really never missed the money,” one twin says to the other, as her partner in crime concurs. I suspect that’s because “it all piles up to one big nothing” as Dave Matthews aptly sings. You cannot take it with you. Watching what it does when and where it goes is its own reward.
One of the sisters’ favorite pay-it-forward exchanges occurred on a random afternoon in Eatzi’s, a European-style market and bakery in Dallas where one of the twins had gone to splurge on hummus. While waiting for the freshly prepared vegan dish to be packaged, she warned the gaggle of girls in line behind her, “I might be a bit.”
One of the gaggle girls babbled, “Oh, we’re takin’ our moms on a picnic and don’t know what we’re gettin’ anyway. Take your time.”
“Do you like hummus?” the twin in pursuit of her savory self-indulgence asked.
“Love it,” one girl replied. Another said, “I don’t think I’ve ever had it.”
“Here, you have to have a taste,” the twin continued. After lots of “oohing and ahhing,” all agreed it was, in fact, sublime.
The sister made her way to the check-out line where she paid for her goods but then promptly made a U-turn. She found one of the girls and her mom perusing on aisle four.
“Excuse me,” she said handing the girl the $30 dip she just paid for. “This goes in the category of ‘don’t make me mad.’ I want you to have this for your lunch today. Please take it and enjoy.”
“You’re the hummus fairy!” the girl exclaimed. And the two alongside a bewildered mom shared a strangers-no-more hug.
Relentless kindness makes a difference anywhere.
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