Thanks to the Kindest of Strangers

Dear Reader, please help me get this post to Charlie, my hat rescuer, so that he knows how grateful I am.

The Story: If you’ve seen me or photos of me the last few years, then chances are you’ve seen me wearing this cap:

The cap is from the Goorin Bros shop on NW23rd Street  in Portland, and I loved mine so much I got one for my boy so that we could be hat twins.

Then, last week, as I was getting onto the Tube in London, I looked around and realized that my beloved cap was gone!*  I thought I’d dropped it before I’d stepped onto the train, so I stepped off. Then the doors closed and a man with a distressed expressed knocked on the glass from inside… holding my cap.  I dropped it inside the now-departing train.

A mime dance ensued in which, I hoped, I realized that the man was going to stop at the very next tube stop with my hat.

The train bearing my hat disappeared. Two minutes later another train appeared.  When I got to the next stop and the sea of embarking and departing bodies settled to a trickle, there he was with my cap in hand.

When I thanked him, offered to pay him, asked him if I could do anything in recompense, Charlie’s answer was a bold-faced lie: “anybody would do the same,” he said.

Not so.

Most people wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t notice when another person dropped the cap in the first place, wouldn’t pick up the cap and signal to the hat dropper, and certainly wouldn’t take 15 minutes out of their days to return the hat to the dropper.

I managed to snap a picture with Charlie:

(What do you call a selfie with two people? An “Us”ie?)

And I gave Charlie my card and the promise of dinner if he ever makes it to Oregon.

Now I’d like to get him my repeated thanks, so let’s play the Six Degrees of Separation game.  If you would please be so kind as to share this post on your Twitter or Facebook feeds, I’m confident that my thanks will reach Charlie soon.

And the Good Samaritan award goes to…

* By the way, the moral of this story is, “don’t try to scan a picture of a receipt into Evernote while you’re boarding a train or risk losing your beloved cap.”  Sigh.