MyBrainHurts

Oh shit, I think this is the start of the longest plot in Calvin and Hobbes?

Certainly one of the plot points with the most long term effects as that box is the transmogrifier, the time travel something and the duplicator?

My conservative uncle does this instinctively for community and strangers.

For strangers, he’s always the first to rush out and help folks.

I rember when we were at a lakefront cottage he’ll rent for the family to come visit and he saw folks struggling to get a boat out of increasingly bad weather and immediately loaded us into the truck to go help for the next hour.

He also seemingly knows the name of every employee he encounters. When he go to that cabin, he’ll bring bottles of wine to give to the check in folks, the cleaning staff (and a thing of cider for one person who years ago said they don’t like wine.) When we shop for the food for the weekend, it takes twice as long because he stops and has a conversation with seemingly everyone in the gigantic store and knows their names, their kids and they know him and what he’s been up to.

In a lot of ways, he’s a damned admirable man, even if I find his politics repellant.

This book is full of them

The author also had a few great TED talks on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Not a real response, but this is a very nice comment and I think it’s the type of thing that makes the fediverse a better place.

I got one a few months ago that is my abslolute favourite, not sure if it counts. Important context, I’m 40 but still play soccer with folks as young as 20. So, one game I’m defending against a young fast kid and beat him to the ball (barely!) a few times in a row on long ball chases. After the third or fourth time he looks over after the race and says “You’re really fast for an… uhhh uh uh, you’re really fast!”

He meant so well and it was adorable watching him realize mid sentence that I probably didn’t want to be called an old man.