Pay it Forward (taken from a letter the Haven received with a $100 donation)

“I took my daughter to school down in Boston and got stuck for a few days because of the snowstorm right after New Year’s. My sons and husband were home alone; and low and behold I got a phone call from my 16-year-old to let me know he was “starving”. A relative term – given he had a full refrigerator, freezer and pantry to choose from – the missing component was the cook (AKA – me).

I assured him he would be OK; and told him there was a one hundred dollar bill his grandmother had given him for Christmas that he could use to go to the store, or order pizza, and I would reimburse him when I returned. It turned out he talked his older brother into driving him to Hannaford’s to get some food.

Fast forward a few days: I returned from Boston and asked my older son for the change from the hundred-dollar bill so I could reimburse his brother. He pulled five twenties from his pocket and handed them to me. When I asked how they spent no money at all, he got all upset because he realized the clerk had given him the wrong change from a self-service kiosk malfunction; he was supposed to get $30 back, but the clerk gave him $100!

I told my son not worry; that we would go to Hannaford’s to straighten it out. When we told the manager he said they’d closed out the books for the previous week and it would be a mess to try to straighten it out… so donate the $70 to a local food shelf (this is where the Haven comes in…).

Another day goes by, and when I went to pick my daughter up at a friend’s house my car slid into a snow bank and got me hopelessly stuck. As I got on the phone with AAA, a sanding truck drove by and I yelled out to the driver asking him if I could buy some sand. Instead, he sanded the entire area around the car, got out and threw some more sand under my tires, and I was out of the snow bank in no time! When I asked to reimburse him for the sand he said ‘No thanks, no problem’. I drove away thinking how lucky I was; and how nice it is to have people like that in our community.

I figure – in the spirit of paying it forward – I would have been thrilled to be rescued for $30; so let’s round out the $70 from Hannaford’s and make it an even $100!”