The Ticket

We were standing in the queue to buy a cinema ticket. It wasn't a long queue but there was only one woman at the till; we had been waiting for quite some time.

Then a young man approached. Late-teens-early-twenties. Short sandy hair. Unmemorably dressed. He walked past us to two guys of around his age, who were standing in the queue behind us. He opened his mouth and words came out in nervous quick succession:

"You going to see The Dark Knight Rises?"
The two guys are a little taken aback. "Yes," one says.
"Students?"
"Yes".
And the approacher just said, "here," and thrust a cinema ticket into the hand of one of the approachees, and walked away as quickly as he could.

The ticket giver was long gone before the ticket receiver realised what had just happened and shouted, "Thanks mate! Decent of you!", and so his thank you was only heard by his fellow queuers, all of whom looked simultaneously amazed, impressed and jealous.

We speculated why he'd done it. The look on his face as he delivered his lines was one of determination. And embarrassment. Was he embarrassed to be doing such a random act of kindness? Was he embarrassed because he'd just been stood up, hence the spare ticket? On reflection, his face could have just been damming tears. The redness was certainly there. The fixation on carrying out the task and leaving before anything could be said. Before he could even be thanked.

Good on him, if that be the case. He turned his hurt into kindness. Into another's happiness. Not bad in a world where our hurt so frequently becomes violence and hatred.

Whoever stood him up missed out one of the rare gems of the human race.