January 16 - The Kindness of Strangers

The sun was going down and it looked like this was about to become the worst 30th birthday ever.

Write about something nice a stranger did for you.

It was sometime in November 2008. My cousin Maggie, a new friend, my best friend from high school and I were heading into the desert for the weekend. This would be my first time visiting Joshua Tree. New Friend knew some folks who were throwing a party and as it was my 30th birthday, they’d invited us to come out.

We were already off to a rocky start. New Friend had a vintage Mercedes station wagon, truly a beautiful workhorse of a car, but it was already overheating before we even left Los Angeles.