My mother once went into a car dealership to buy a pickup.  She had the money in her purse and was ready to pay in full for the vehicle.  However, she was unable to get any salesmen to notice her.  She was a non-descript, older lady, and, to the unalert salesmen, did not look like a prospect worth worrying about.  She waited for several minutes until it became obvious that no one was interested in her, and then went to another dealership and bought her pickup.

There are lessons here about lost opportunities, and about being inattentive, judgmental, and selectively kind.

Contrast my mother’s story with that of another older lady on a rainy day in a store in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.  She was walking aimlessly among the merchandise, and was plainly not focused on finding or wanting anything.  A young salesman asked if he could be of help.

“No,” she replied, “I am just killing time, waiting for the rain to stop so I can go home.”

“Very well, Madam,” the young man said, “may I bring out a chair for you?” and he brought it without waiting for her answer.  When the rain stopped, he escorted her to the street where she asked him for his card.

Some months later the store manager received a notice requesting that he send that particular young man to Europe to take an order to furnish a castle in Scotland.  The manager sent word back that the young man didn’t work in the furniture department, but that he would send another, more knowledgeable salesman.

The manager got an immediate reply stating that no other salesman would do, and that he must send that particular young man or no one at all.  The letter was from Andrew Carnegie.  The older woman biding her time in the store was Carnegie’s mother.

So it was that the young man was launched on a meteoric rise in his career simply by the act of finding a comfortable chair for a disinterested woman who was “just killing time.”

These two stories should be paired up with those about the boy in the seminary class who refused to move when a young woman asked if she could get by him, and the young man who gave up his seat in the Sunday School class for the late arrival.  These stories can be found on page 25 of my book, In A Grove of Aspens, but I will repeat them here:

My first story happened in the seminary room at the meetinghouse in Baker.  I was visiting seminary that morning, over 30 years ago.  I arrived early.  A young man also arrived early, and seated himself at the first desk of a row.  He slouched in his chair, thus effectively blocking access to the rest of the chairs of that row.

A young woman entered the room a minute later.  Wanting to sit in that same row, she came to a stop beside the young man and said, “Can I get by?”

Without moving, the young man growled, “Crawl over, or go around!”

I was amazed.

I was equally amazed a short time later as I contrasted that scene with a story I was told as I stood in line at the Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City waiting to be admitted to a session of general conference.  I was visiting with another man waiting in the line.  He identified himself as a stake president in St. Anthony, Idaho.

He said that his son had been a student at Brigham Young University.  One Sunday the son was seated in a Sunday School class waiting for it to begin.  Every seat was taken when a girl entered the room.  Being the gentleman that he was, he rose, offered her his seat, and stood at the back of the room through the 45-minute class.

The girl was none other than Sharlene Wells, the then-reigning Miss America.

Sharlene asked her friends who that young man was, and let it be known that she would welcome a date with him.  When told, he thought to himself, “Well, what the heck?  I’ll never have an opportunity to date Miss America again,” so he asked her for a date.

One thing led to another, and the two of them got married—all because of an act of kindness that came naturally to a young man who practiced kindness.

The rest of the story is that Sharlene Wells had spent three years living in Argentina where her father was serving as mission president.  She saw hundreds of young men—missionaries—come and go through the mission home.  She noticed that the best ones, and the hardest workers, were farm boys from Idaho.  She determined then and there that she was going to marry a returned-missionary farm boy from Idaho.

When the young man from the Sunday School class asked her for a date, his prospects were helped immensely by the fact that he was a returned-missionary farm boy from Idaho.  She got what she wanted, and he married Miss America, because of an automatic act of kindness.

And so the lessons:  Pay attention.  Be kind.  Go the extra mile.  Don’t miss out on opportunities by being blind to those around you.

(Postscript:  One of the best articles I’ve ever read was written by Napoleon Hill, entitled “The Habits of Going the Extra Mile.”  The story about Andrew Carnegie’s mother comes from a pamphlet containing that article which my father received in the mail way back when I was a teenager.  I would recommend typing that into your Google search, and reading it for Family Home Evening).