prompt 116 on beautiful stranger

Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.

No, it’s not Madonna’s kind of Beautiful Stranger, but the one whose act of kindness flows from all her deeds and demeanor expressed to the other stranger.

Back in the days when I worked full-time and studied full-time at college, my purse was often thin, which Benjamin Franklin would have disapproved as a sign of excessive spending. I had to sacrifice two meals a day and leisure to make a living as the family’s eldest child. One day I got on the bus to school, but it was too late to realize that I was short of money. I was embarrased to be a public display of poverty, so I was about to got off the bus crestfallen and misrable. The fact about me is that I am tranparant of my feelings and emotions, which are blatantly shown on my face.

Then, a beautiful lady resembling one of those figures in the ancient Greek urns offered me help. With a gracious smile, she paid it forward with her money, and I could ride the bus to my classes. She sat next to me and started chatting with me. It dawned on me that she was an exchange college student from Greece and would return to her country soon. I thanked her, and she said she had been in my shoes before. We parted with smiles and hearts that are universal in all humankind.

John Milton in Paradise Lost describes, β€œThose graceful actsthose thousand decencies, that daily flow from all her words and actions.” Hence, my beautiful stranger.