In either case, I’m willing to sign a petition to look into the matter further, so I did, at the bus stop this morning. But then I had to say this to the lady with the clipboard:

“I’m sorry, but as environmentalists it just seems to me you could be signing one line on a piece of paper, rather than a heavy, shiny, four-color sheet for every single person.”

Guy next to me sniggers. Petition lady is flummoxed. As she should be.

Practice what you preach.

There’s a tiny part of my heart that worries that this was shameless self-promotion. But I had noticed that a couple of the surrounding towns had copies of my book, and that they were often checked out. So…gifting this was a good deed, right?

Sharing is good.

Ruby’s dad kindly came down to the street — they live in a fifth floor walkup — with a big bag packed up with the cookie booty. I started off into the wind and weather, but after several blocks, grew suspicious. This was too heavy. I had only purchased a dozen boxes this year. I put my packages down and did a cookie count: 20 boxes.

There are few times in life where such a huge moral question comes into play: keep the Thin Mints, or return them to Ruby? I had them in hand — they were mineminemine! But if I didn’t report the error, others would suffer, and my little Girl Scout friend would have to pay — not only in cash money, but perhaps her error would result in punishment! What if my skullduggery resulted in Ruby not being able to attend Girl Scout Camp this summer, the eagerly anticipated reward to all the cookie-selling?

I stood on the corner. I was nearly free, steps from the subway and my escape home. After an intense internal struggle, my ten years in scouting won over the deadly sin of gluttony. Back I went to Ruby’s, clear of conscience, but sad at heart.

`”Be Prepared” — to do the right thing.

“Will you teach me?” my friend asked.

It can be tricky and frustrating to start out on Twitter. Its logic is sort of reverso-Facebook, so it can take a while to understand. Plus, there’s the mystery of explaining the hashtag — trying to tell someone, yes, it means something and you use it like this, and no, it means nothing but your own private jokes at the same time.

But she wanted to learn, and I thought, Good for you. And she’s a sweetheart, so she asked if she could bring her iPad over to my house on our day off and pick up lunch on the way. Of course we had a ball, and lots of laughs, she got past the initial frustration and is now a tweeting newbie.

It was just a couple of hours helping someone learn something new. But here’s what I ended up thing about when it was over — something I think about a lot, unfortunately. I love my country, you know I do, but now I live in a nation that tells me that I’m probably going to have to work until I’m 75 or 80 before I can retire. More and more I see my friends being downsized and pushed out before they’re even 50. So who’s utilizing and taking advantage of the the incredible expertise and the willingness to learn of the 50+ citizens? We need to fill in this piece of the puzzle. And fast.

My friend and I don’t make much money, but we like what we do, and we receive full benefits. We are the lucky ones.

Don’t forget — experience counts.

So it’s a good reminder for me when I’m proven wrong (also, though, I hate being wrong). Here’s the most recent incident that brought me up short…

I was at the airport this week, and it was early, about 7:30 am. Not that that’s so early, but when you consider what time you have to get up to get to an airport and through the whole TSA thing, well, there you go. So that part’s all over and I’m waiting to board when two big groups of teenagers park themselves nearby, all passengers on my flight. Some are loud, some look slack-jawed and have arrived in pajama pants and slippers for the trip. What th’…? This sets off my crabby lady alarm, the one that might say things like, “You kids get your bikes off my lawn!” So now I’m unhappy both because they bug me, and because they make me feel old. Even though, in my heart, I am certain that I’m right to not like them. Now I don’t like them and I don’t like me.

Time to board, and of course I’m surrounded by teenagers, in front of me, behind me, and a girl next to me, who immediately falls asleep. So I forget to be unhappy for a while, because I love to fly, and I’m off on a nice trip. When she wakes up, we start to chat. “Where are you all off to?” I asked, thinking they were a team of some sort. A college had invited them all out for a group interview. Oh. Turns out, though, that my new friend was a senior already, so this was a bit of a lark. She had applied to 25 schools, and her first choice was Yale. She was a little bit worried because she was only #2 in the class, and she didn’t much like being #2.

Now it turns out she had applied to my alma mater, too (not Yale), and before I knew it I was so charmed by her I’d given her my card and offered to write a letter for her should she get waitlisted.

Who am I kidding? This girl won’t need me. And have I mentioned I am a mentor to a student at Columbia who as a community project is trying to add a new major to the curriculum and worked for Michelle Obama last summer? Shouldn’t I be learning things from her? Sure, I was totally sincere in offering to write a letter for my seatmate, and that’s a very nice good deed. But better than that good deed would be if I could remember to say this to myself every once in a while:

Who do you think you are?

To those of you who have not bowed to what many consider a “Hallmark holiday,” how about this: call one person today who needs a little love. Doesn’t matter who it is. For all its commercialism, there’s something great about a day that’s devoted to love.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

22¢ December 24

I guess it would be easy to say that Christmas Eve, and other happy religious holidays this time of year people everywhere enjoy, abounds with Good Deeds. All season long we’re on our best behavior, and if there are ever a couple of days where all we’re doing is concentrating on making others happy, well then this is it. But for decades there has never been a Christmas Eve that I don’t think back to one long ago, and with great shame.

I must have been around nine, and my Mom and I were doing some last minute holiday shopping in our hometown of New Bedford, which had long ago lost the riches brought there by the whaling industry. Dusk was falling outside and the shop was about to close for the holiday when a little boy came in alone, younger than I was. I watched him look around carefully, finally pick out an apron, and bring it to the proprietor. He held out his hand, and the shop owner looked down. “That apron’s $1.00,” he said. “You need 22¢ more. You don’t have enough money.” The kid was crestfallen, and left the store without a Christmas gift for his mother.

I had 22¢ in my pocket. I knew I had enough to help him out, and I didn’t. I knew it standing there, I knew it when I didn’t run after him down the street in 1961, I know it as I write this, 50 years later. I know this has the ring of a corny fable, but it has broken my heart every Christmas since.

I wonder sometimes whether we all have one personal original sin. I believe this is mine. So whenever I think of this 22¢, I try to remember:

Give a little, however you can.

Now anybody who’s worked in retail will tell you, customers are always asking the same ridiculous things:

“Can’t you give me a break on this?”

“Do you have a coupon I can use?”

“How about you give this to me for free?”

“Why is this so expensive?”

But not this shopper. First of all, it was Sunday, and while everyone else was in sweats (except for the jerky adult males who insist on basketball shorts and flip-flops in 30 degree weather — what is that about, anyway?), this woman was dressed impeccably, with a pert beret, too. And she was polite. So already I was predisposed to like her. She approached me and said, “Excuse me. I’m trying to figure out how much this book is with tax included. I think it’s going to be $20.63, and I only have $20.03 with me. Could you check for me?”

I did, and it was. She looked totally crestfallen — but she didn’t try any of the stupid human tricks above. I suggested she go over to the customer service desk and put it on hold for a few days. She could come back later.

She thanked me, and off she went. This kind of thing happens all the time, where people forgot their wallet, or simply don’t have enough money. Why did my heart break just a little for her? She was lovely, about 30 years old, and the book was a giant volume on how to write a resume. From the way she dressed on her day off, to her gracious demeanor, to her little beret, to her weekend search for a job — I don’t know…she just got to me. So I found 60¢ in my pocket and I went over to her. “Is this all you need?”

She accepted the change — graciously, of course — thanked me profusely, and went to pay for the book. Of course, on her way out, she stopped by again and said, “Really, I just want to extend my most heartfelt thanks.”

Believe me, this woman is not going to have a hard time finding a job.

And why do I feel like this is the best money I ever spent?

Nice is as nice does.

Cousin Mimi and I have developed a lovely routine of turndown service.

We come from an etiquette family. Everyone checks with each other on the dress code before a family event, people know a shrimp fork on sight (and how to use it), you call to say thank you for a dinner party before 10 a.m. the next morning, and if you come to stay overnight, you bring a hostess gift.

But now Mimi and I have gone crazy and dispensed with the hostess gift rule. It’s Mimi’s doing, really, though the bedtime gift has long been a favorite of mine. As a little girl, Mrs. Claus always brought me a dress for Christmas, which was delivered on my bedroom chair by her husband. (Occasionally I’d awake on Christmas Eve in the middle of the night and see its outline in the dark, but never, ever caught Santa delivering). Also, I’d be so undone by the end of the day on Christmas, in such a state that it was all over, that Santa was always thoughtful enough to leave something small under my pillow. In a way, Mimi has found a way to adultize the tradition.

For the last year, Mimi has been working at a very fancy hotel, where there is a luxurious turndown service. Often there’s a beautiful art book on the guest’s pillow. Bath salts are replenished. The lights are lowered. It’s a tres romantic place. So as a funny thing, when I come to visit, Mimi has begun to sneak into my bedroom when I’m not looking and plump my pillows, fold down the duvet…and leave a treat. Chocolates, a little hat she knew I’d like, some delicious mints. It’s so fun, and I look forward to it every evening. But of course she’s the hostess, so when I went to visit last week, I brought her treats, too: cute socks, a lovely jar of tapenade, lemon cookies.

Now that we’re old enough to love going to bed — look forward to it, actually — how great to get a reward when you climb in at the end of a long day.

So, just a thought — instead of the same old hostess gift…how about turndown service? A different way to say thank you.

Just a little something.

My cousin Jim and I were standing in his living room, looking out the window of his glass-enclosed porch at the beach, which is only about fifteen feet away. Where the raft was when we were kids – and where it still bobs in the summer months – would be about fifty yards.

This was a big old summer house when we were kids, but now Jim and his wife Cindy have winterized it and made it beautiful, and it’s perpetually filled with kids, grandchildren and fun. Someone in our family has lived here in Bay View for nearly a century, but now Jim is both the newest member of the family to settle here and the only one left. I ask him about the new jetty getting buffeted out the window, and he proudly tells me he headed up the committee for its recent reconstruction.

“I wish we knew more about Grandma Kavanaugh,” he said ruefully as we reminisced; it was our grandparents who initially bought a summer home here. But she died before any of us were around, so none of us kids knew her, or much about her. Jim had recently seen some Bay View Association minutes from the 1940s that said, merely, “Today we lost our leader.” They meant Grandma Agnes, and it saddened him that this was the only mention. No emotion, no history.

It was a visiting day for me: I left Jim and Cindy’s and drove over to see my friends Hope and Ruth at the assisted living place they now call home. You may remember them: the Atkinson girls of Cranberry Surprise Pie fame here on the One Good Deed blog. They have grown older and frailer and had to leave their little house in the woods, but I try to visit them each time I’m in town. (“When you come, you’ll come,” said Hopie, with typical Atkinson logic.) Bay Viewers from way back themselves, I told them where Jim had moved to, and showed them photos.

“See that jetty?” Hope asked as I scrolled through the pictures. “My mother and your grandmother Agnes and some of the other Bay View ladies got that built after the 1938 hurricane. They had to all go to Boston to get permits and licenses and everything else. It was quite a lark.”

“Quite a lark.” And just like that, I’ve learned a bit of history about Grandma Agnes. It was almost creepy: was Jim and my wish about Agnes answered almost immediately because I did something nice by making sure I checked in on the girls? Seems that way, doesn’t it? Or maybe that’s just the way life should work. I’m going to take it one step further, though – next time I go to visit the Atkinsons, I’m going to bring cousin Jim along, and bask in the joy of their history-trading. “You always want to know more,” I said to Hope at our visit. Getting it just takes some doing.

Find your history.