Random Acts of Columbia Kindness

His screams were the first thing I heard.

I looked up from my computer in the corner of Lakeside Café and Deli and spotted him: a 4-year-old child with blond/reddish hair.

He leapt away from the table where his baby sister sat in a high chair and stood ramrod straight to wail at the top of his lungs.

Somehow, some hot coffee had spilled in his lap.

His mother stripped off his pants and kneeled down to hug him—tight —while the screams went on.

Lakeside co-owner Min So rushed over and wiped his tears while they streamed down his face. Another employee came with a bag of ice. Steve Kelly, who was busy writing a novel (I'm not kidding), left his laptop and grabbed a cold towel for the child. Another woman had a tub of shea butter in her purse, and gave some to the boy, which she said could sooth his legs.

His cries died down.

Surrounded by people, he said his legs didn’t hurt anymore.

I joined in, and my job was set in motion too. I watched him and his younger sister while his mother went to her car to get him some new pants.

In the end, he was fine. Minutes later, he was eating his sandwich quietly with his mother and his sister, while the rest of us trickled back to our previous tasks.

And I couldn’t help but to be amazed by how many people left their work, their lunch, and their peaceful places to offer a hand, and how the boy’s mother trusted people she didn’t know to step in.

As you well know, life doesn’t always happen this way.

Have you been following the Lululemon murder trial? Brittany Norwood was convicted last week of first-degree murder in the March 11 killing at the Bethesda store of her coworker, Jayna Murray.

According to trial testimony, employees at the Apple store next door heard the assault, as well as Murray’s cries.

They didn’t do anything about it.

“Nobody did anything. And Jayna Murray died,” wrote Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak.

It’s hard to say why the Apple employees didn’t call police. They wouldn’t talk to reporters about it.

After following this trial all week, I was heartened to see the throngs of kind Columbians jump into action Friday.

I’m still just getting to know Columbia — I moved here a little more than a year ago so my husband could take a job at Enterprise Community Investments. I was initially a little worried this was another slab of impersonal suburbia, crammed with busy commuters on their iPhones — people whom I couldn’t expect to care about me or my family.

I couldn’t be more wrong.