Random Act of Kindness

Yesterday morning, Kathryn, Andrew and I went to Mizzou Arena for our last (ever!) basketball ticket pickup in college. Ticket pickups have been some of our most memorable college experiences, because you always learn a lot about others after spending four hours with them in freezing cold weather. They typically open up at 8 am, but Mizzou Athletics has been generous lately and opens the doors early so you can wait indoors instead of outside. After last month's four-hour wait for tickets, Kathryn and I came prepared with books to read.

There are plenty of ways to strategize ticket pickup. You can go early and leave early, go toward the end and hope the line has died down, budge with friends, give your ID to someone else (IF you're lucky, I can't say I've tone this often) or risk it and go in the middle. This morning, we decided we'd leave at 9 am and hope the line had died down. So it was shocking to us when we walked in and saw NOBODY in line.

Mizzou Arena even started handing out donuts, coffee and hot chocolate for everyone camping out for tickets, so when they had five extra trays of donuts leftover, the staff let us take a box on our way out.

Andrew and Kathryn in the empty Mizzou Arena

Kathryn was joking about what to do with the donuts, and when we dropped Andrew off we saw some girls we knew and offered them donuts. It sounded pretty sketchy at first when we rolled down the car window and screamed, HEY! WANT A DONUT? but kept us laughing. Then, Kathryn had the idea of going to Speaker's Circle, Mizzou's most popular location to deliver free things, and handing out free donuts. I named it our Random Act of Kindness and off we went.

Kathryn handing out donuts in Speaker's Circle

We parked the car with its hazard lights on and energetically hopped out, prepared to deliver donuts. And then it began; college students love free food. The first few people we offered donuts to in Speaker's Circle said no, but once one person grabbed one, it was collegiate peer pressure. We were standing outside for a duration of two minutes before getting rid of practically the entire donut box. So lesson learned- doing random acts of kindness is fun, and gives you a funny story!