Operation Nice

I ate lunch in Rittenhouse Square today. I love that park. Just a whole city block of grass and benches and trees and shade. It's lovely. (Also, I love that in Philadelphia you can sit outside during lunch in July and not die. Texas summers are brutal.)

So today, I was eating lunch and a couple of women walked by with baskets of flowers that had tags on them. They passed me and suddenly one of them stopped and turned to me. She handed me a flower and said, "This is for you."

It was a lovely flower. A pink carnation.

Behold:
The tag says: "This gesture is courtesy of Operation Nice. Pass it on. OPERATIONNICE.COM."

Here's a closer shot.

I thought it was so great! Such a lovely flower and I sure love pink. I was already thinking of showing Jeff when I got home that night.

And then it hit me. I wasn't supposed to keep it. I was supposed to pass it on. At first, I was totally fine with that. You receive something nice and then you pass it along to someone else. How great is that?

But then you have to actually do it. Like you have to pick someone out of the crowd and walk up to them and hand them a pink carnation.

Suddenly, Operation Nice became Operation Let's Make The Rest Of Your Lunch Awkward As You Try To Decide Who To Give The Flower To.

First off, I didn't want to give it to a nicely dressed business man. I was afraid of looking like I was hitting on someone so I decided against that. Besides, then he'd just use it to actually hit on someone and I didn't want to enable any unsolicited come-on.

Then I started thinking about maybe who deserved the flower more or who would most appreciate it. There were a few homeless men around that I could have given it to, but then I was afraid I was suffering from a messiah complex: "See how much better your day is now that I, a young white woman, has given you, an older homeless man, a pink flower. Feel blessed and praise God."

So I nixed that idea too.

After a few minutes I looked up and saw three elderly ladies walking down the sidewalk. The one in the middle was using a walker. And so I decided - she, the walker lady, was going to get my pink carnation.

As she and her friends approached, I grabbed the flower and stood up. I took a step towards her and said, "This is for you."

At first she seemed a little confused, but her friends started saying things like, "Awww, that's so nice!" She took the flower and said, "Thank you, that's very kind of you." I was glad she appreciated it. She smiled real big and then she said, "God bless you, sweetheart."

Then I started to get a little uncomfortable. I mean, you know, it's just a flower, lady. I was just trying to be nice. I didn't know it was going to make your day or anything and OH MY GOSH WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? Why am I embarrassed that the gesture means more to you than I had intended. I mean, isn't that good?

I spent the walk back to work thinking about how apparently not used to being kind I am, and how not used to interacting with kind people we must all be.

Maybe I'll try and do something about that.