This post is inspired by Shot@Life, an initiative of the United Nations Foundation dedicated to using vaccines as a cost-effective way to save children’s lives in developing countries. (Image courtesy United Nations Foundation.)
Hi team, I need help. Here’s why:
For every comment on this post, Shot@Life gets $20 to vaccinate a kid.
Twenty. Dollars.
Twenty dollars is what it costs to give one child four vaccines that help protect them against measles, pneumonia, diarrhea, and polio. During Shot@Life’s Blogust: Blog Relay for Good, 31 bloggers have been helping to secure $200,000 in sponsor donations. We need 10,000 comments, and we’re about 1,000 away from that goal right now.
Over the years, your comments have shaped my life. Whether you were celebrating Hank’s birth with me, or cheering my Life List, or comforting me when things took a difficult turn. I know you guys care about helping other people because of how much help you’ve already heaped on me.
So let’s do this.
Can you comment twice? Yes. Yes you can. And if you have a means of spreading the word, please Tweet, Pin, link on Facebook, or post a quick link on your own site.
Let us know the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you in comments. And thanks to you for being so nice to other people. I like you.
Yesterday Fadra Nally of All Things Fadra wrote about the comments you never see. Tomorrow, I’m passing the baton to my friend Stacey Ferguson of Justice Fergie — so you can help us reach our final goal by commenting on her site as well. We have until August 31. Thanks again.
Mighty Girl 
The nicest thing anyone has ever done for me was to anonymously pay for my bill as I had lunch at the airport with my boyfriend (in his Army BDUs) before sending him back to the Middle East in 2004. I was already so emotional that day, so the thoughtfulness of the gesture has been forever planted in my heart.
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oh, so many nice things here. Can’t say the nicest thing ever but most recently, how my little guy put both his hands on my cheeks and turned my head to give me a kiss after I got home from work.
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thanks for doing this!
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I didn’t get asked to Prom in high school and I was feeling a little loserish and angsty. A friend dropped a flower and a sweet note on my doorstep that evening. I’ve since lost touch with her. Thanks Nancy Soares,wherever you are!
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Oh darn it – I didn’t read the directions carefully enough for my first comment.
So: I’m having trouble coming up with THE one (too many) but a sweet, small niceness was when a clerk at Panera held my baby while I got coffee. The little ones are sometimes the best 🙂
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Always happy to see this kind of thing.
When my daughter was a few weeks old, she got very, very sick. I took her to the doctor and he prescribed a medicine. The pharmacy gave me the wrong kind of mouth syringe and I accidentally gave my tiny baby ten times the dosage of medicine. I realized it and rushed to the emergency room. The ER told me it would be a four hour wait since it was not immediately life threatening. I sat in the corner of the waiting room, sobbing and thinking about how I didn’t deserve this sweet baby of mine. The nurse came in and called the next patient’s name. It was an elderly man who looked terribly ill. He pointed to me and said, “that baby is going to take my room. Put me at the end of the line.”
My daughter ended up being alright with no liver damage. I tried to find the man after we left the ER, but I couldn’t. Who knows how long he waited in that waiting room.
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The nicest thing someone has done for me is love me!
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The nicest thing anyone ever did for me was my husband asking me to marry him.
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We are in the final days of Blogust! Will we make it? Everyone needs to comment. Let your voices be heard. Save a child and save our future.
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One of the nicest things I can remember is my dad comforting me when I was crying by telling me that tears ‘clean all the crap out of your eyes.’ He made me laugh, and made it ok for me to feel all at the same time.
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Though it’s a tiny thing, I still remember fondly the day I was stood up for a date at starbucks and the barista comped my self-soothing sugar bomb of a frappuccino.
(($20! This is AMAZING!))
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Nicest thing? My neighbors held the school bus for me and my son this morning. That was pretty nice of them.
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The nurses who were on my floor while I gave birth to my baby boy last year. They were doulas and sisters and oh such wonderful women. I will always be grateful.
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The nicest thing for me was reading the comments people left after the birth of my son. So much love, so much caring. I felt incredibly blessed.
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What a great way to help kids!
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My husband (when he was still my boyfriend) brought me freshly picked wildflowers wrapped in a damp paper towel when he picked me up at the airport. We had been dating three weeks and it’s obvious why I married him.
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My friend helped me move my giant dresser up three floors. No elevator. Thanks, Dan!
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I’m having a hard time coming up with the nicest thing, but here’s one: when I turned 40 this year, my husband surprised me and flew my two oldest friends out from the east coast to celebrate with us.
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I really think the nicest thing — or maybe I should say the best thing — anyone has ever done for me is to forgive me for a terrible mistake I made. Not that there were no consequences, but I was really forgiven. Amazing.
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I find that the friendships I’m making through my blog and various online classes have filled a part of my heart that I never knew needed filling. I am so content and confident because of it.
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My husband and I just bought our first home and when we arrived at the house just ahead of the moving truck, my mom and sister-in-law had stocked the fridge with dinner, dessert, champagne, wine, and beers. Angels.
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My mom put a handmade “love note” in my lunchbox every day from 8th-12th grade. That was so nice.
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The nicest thing people have done for me is to just love me and never stop. Even when I don’t deserve it. People who have never given up on me.
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The nicest thing anyone ever did for me was give me a place to stay when it wasn’t safe for me to go home growing up.
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A very nice thing that a friend did for me recently was on my last day of work before moving to another job, he secretly got everyone to wear plaid, which I was notorious for. I was kind of choked up to see that so many people were willing…
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Every time my boyfriend has helped me move and said “Of course” when I thanked him.
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I don’t know what *the* nicest thing is, but I have always been so touched that my parents helped support me financially my first year out of college so that I could take an internship I really cared about at a human rights organization, rather than a job I hated somewhere else. They called it a “loan” but asked me to “pay it forward” rather than pay it back. I’ve been doing that ever since.
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Probably has to do with all the naps I got to take with my first baby due to my mom offering an hour here and there when she’d see how exhausted I was.
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My Nicest Thing is an ongoing thing. I’m struggling through a bout of depression and anxiety right now, and a few select friends have access to my personal blog where I write about all of the horribleness. After they read it, they don’t ask me talk about it, but they will send me encouraging texts and emails with their support and love. It means so, so much to know that they’re with me through this.
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My partner taught me about unconditional love.
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In college, right after Katrina devastated the gulf coast, I traveled down to do some volunteer work with our alternative spring break program. The first day we got there, we were all very, very upset at the damage. All incredibly shaken, no one spoke to each other for hours. We’d gone to the one standing restaurant for miles and miles – a crappy taco place, even though none of us could afford a meal out. A man came over and asked us what we were doing here in Mississippi, and he chatted with a few of us for a moment and left, none of us thinking anything of it. When we went to pay for our meal, we found it had been paid for and we’d been left a note that just said “the people of Mississippi thank you.” We were all so touched that this man, in the midst of tragedy and losing his home, would take the time to pay for our meal.
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My best friend has helped me move across country many times – she’s pretty awesome!
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LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea! The nicest thing anyone has ever done for me has actually happened several times…when my babies were born (the last one 5 weeks early), and when I had surgeries for a herniated disc and gall bladder, my “village” of WONDERFUL friends brought dinners…lots of them. It is amazing how helpful a hot, prepared meal can be for a Mom that is not functioning at 100%. 🙂
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I have been blessed by far too many wonderful people doing nice things. But in recent memory, my best friends cooking an amazing potluck and bringing it over with champagne on New Year’s a couple years ago. I had just got my heart broken and literally couldn’t figure out how to organize plans let alone face midnight and a new year in my new paradigm. Their care in creating a place for me to be that night and feel loved still makes me tear up. Doesn’t seem like much – but I’ll be forever grateful.
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The nicest thing? Just being my friend.
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And the second comment is going up to say that the nicest thing someone i never met ever did for me is invent vaccines against horrible afflictions like Measles and polio. We take for granted being able to grow up healthy in places like the U.S. these days. Thank you to those research scientists who gave me the blessing of a healthy childhood!
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I’m pro-vaccination! I would love to support other kids being healthy!
As for the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me … That’s a hard call. I guess I’m lucky there have been some great things over the years! The nicest inadvertent thing would probably be casually mentioning my name, ten years ago, to someone who happened to be looking for a writer which ended up launching my career. Which was awesome. The nicest “on purpose” thing was my now-husband who I met on the re bound who believed in me enough to create a life with me. And now we have two kids and a mortgage. 🙂
Thanks so much for doing this. It’s a very very nice thing.
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I was in the hospital on strict bed rest while pregnant with my twins (now 9 years old). My friend Priscilla would come over twice a week at lunchtime and put lotion on my feet. It sounds like such a small thing but it was so kind.
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There have been numerous nice deeds committed on my behalf. Two incidents stand out from the rest. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was on the verge of homelessness days before delivery & my mother-in-law saved the day and provided the deposit I needed for my new apartment. The second incident involved moving. A friend’s father helped move all my things from the dorm to my new apartment. Had he not done me this kindness I would have been forced to lug a shopping cart up several blocks. I will always be extremely grateful to them both for their generosity in spirit.
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A second thing involves one of the same friends – back when we were 13 and part of the “popular” group…which just meant that every few weeks someone was made the sacrificial lamb to receive the maelstrom of emotions and hormones that revolve around being a pre-teen. I was on the axe at one point and as the group hurled insults and general meanness my way, one friend stood on my right, the other on my left, creating a little fortress as they defended me in the face of such terrible words.
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My husband rubs my feet when we sit on the couch together.
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And another…
I have a friend who will do anything in the world for me. I have gone to Europe and Sundance with her twice. We’ve gone camping together and taken our kids to disneyland together. And all of those things are really, really wonderful. But the nicest thing she has ever done for me (and continues to do for me daily) is to love me unconditionally. I am completely free to be myself around her, without fear.
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One of the nicest things my parents did for me was to get me vaccinated as a child!
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my parents were always my best allies.
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I ❤ vaccines!
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I recently moved to NYC and I am surprised consistently by the kindness of New Yorkers. 🙂
This is great post – Maggie, you are an inspiration!
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My sister-in-law bought me a very nice picture frame to congratulate me on my recent engagement; an engagement that the rest of my family has totally ignored with no words of congratulations or encouragement.
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yesterday a stranger came to my rescue with an air compressor when my tire was deflated. maybe not the nicest but certainly worth a comment.
yeah for good things!
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When my husband is patient and gracious when I am not deserving of this behavior in that moment. I try and do the same when the roles are reversed!
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The nicest thing done to me has been the quiet, persistent refusal of my fella to let me believe the stories in my head. No other act has challenged me as much to be the best person I can be.
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