Paying it forward

One day, in around 1975, when my mother was waiting at a bus stop, she noticed a woman crying -- she left her purse on a bus and she didn't have any money to get home with her little girl. So my mother gave her five dollars so she could take a cab home.
The woman was overcome with gratitude, and so was her husband when he came over later that day to pay back the money. They just couldn't get over that a stranger would give them money.
But that's the kind of person my mother was.
And now I read this story about a time when Barak Obama helped out a family by giving them $100 when they really needed it.
And I think that's the kind of person Barak Obama is, too.