It was just another trip to the grocery store. A mother checking out with her items, her two boys playing the claw machine nearby, the kind of ordinary afternoon that blends into all the others. Then her son Zander came running up, clutching a stuffed animal with the kind of pride only a child who’s just won something can have.
But he hadn’t asked for money. He hadn’t begged or pleaded for a turn at the machine. A nice teenager, he explained excitedly, had put money in so he could play.
The mother looked around, confused. Who was this teenager? Why would they do that? And then she learned the truth: it wasn’t a teenager at all. It was Lamont, a cashier on his break. He had seen the boys playing, seen their excitement, and without being asked, without expecting anything in return, he had quietly given them coins so they could try the claw machine.
He didn’t do it for recognition. He didn’t announce it or make a show of it. He just did it because he saw an opportunity to make a child’s day a little brighter, and he took it.
The mother was moved. She thanked Lamont, then found his manager to make sure someone in authority knew what he had done. Because in a world that often feels dominated by negativity, by people who take more than they give, Lamont’s small act of kindness stood out like a light in the dark.
It wasn’t a grand gesture. It wasn’t life-changing in the dramatic sense. But to Zander, clutching that stuffed animal, it was everything. It was proof that strangers can be kind. That people care. That the world still has Lamonts in it—people who see joy as something worth creating, even when no one’s watching.
Kindness doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Sometimes it’s just a few coins in a claw machine. Sometimes it’s a cashier on his break deciding that a child’s smile is worth more than his spare change.
Lamont didn’t change the world that day. But he changed Zander’s afternoon. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe the world gets better not through grand revolutions, but through small, repeated acts of decency—one stuffed animal, one smile, one moment of unexpected generosity at a time.
There are still really good people like Lamont making the world better for children. And we need more of them. We need more people who see a chance to bring joy and take it, without hesitation, without expecting applause.
Because that’s what kindness is. Not a performance. Just a choice.