out of character?

I was going to blog about the people who live upstairs and their apparent lack of courtesy/respect... but lets be honest, we can probably all come up with at least one or two stories per day of people not showing common decency towards one another.

Rather, I will blog about something else, because it is (unfortunately) much harder to find examples of people's actions that are good and nice and perhaps even a little old fashioned by today's standards.

I was at the mall, and there were lots of teenagers at the mall. I have a bit of a stereotype on how teenagers behave, and in my own defence, most of their actions seem to affirm my stereotype - the majority of teenagers lack respect. In fact, the story starts out that very way...

There were 4 boys exiting the mall, I was behind them, and they were behind an older lady with a cart. The boys were kind of weaving around people, it appeared they were in more of a hurry than most of the others. They were definitely in more of a hurry than the older lady, especially when she suddenly stopped moving so she could put on her gloves before exiting the mall. One of the boys banged into her, causing her to drop a glove. The boy continued on.

But the other 3 didn't. While one of these teenage boys stopped to pick up the dropped glove for the lady, the other two were giving the first boy some heck. "You can't just bang into someone like that..." they lectured. Even more surprising (to me anyway) was the next thing they said: "Go back and apologize to her, or we aren't going to hang out with you today."

WOW.

Even more WOW - the first boy did as they suggested. Head down, and looking a little ashamed, he walked up to the lady. "I am sorry for banging into you, and sorry I didn't help you with the glove you dropped."

I think the older lady was as surprised as I was. Seemed a little out of character for teenage boys in the year 2010...

Every once and awhile I need to be reminded that there are indeed good, caring people out there, and I am thankful to have been witness to it. Kinda renews my faith in humanity.