Random acts of ugh

Anyone who has met him can confirm: My husband is the NICEST person on the planet.

(OK, everyone with their "opposites attract" comments, that's enough. He's nice, I'm crabby, hardy-har-har.)

Something about being the NICEST person on the planet seems to earn him a world full of random meanness.

Remember back in the spring when someone spray painted homophobic slurs all over his car? That, of course, was the biggest and grandest meanness. But we've noticed in the last year that it's kind of a commen trend. For some reason unbeknownst to me, people do random mean things, and as luck would have it my wonderful husband is often the recipient.

The most recent occurance (and the reason I'm bringing it up now) happened over night when someone stuck a bunch of pieces of chewed gum all over Ben's windshield. Our parking lot was packed last night -- no one else (that we could tell) got "gummed." It wound up being no big deal because it was cold enough that the gum froze and Ben could just flick it off. But it begs the question -- why?

Why do people do random mean things?

Why do people key cars or let air out of someone's tires? Why do people smash in windows? Why do they leave piles of garbage on a stranger's doorstep, or pour milk all over a fabric stroller left out over night? Why do they rip pages out of your text book?

I understand most crimes -- stealing? You wanted/needed something. Cheating? You were out for personal gain. Pranks or meanness directed at someone you know and don't like? You think the person has it coming to him. Even hate crimes directed at a person or group of people? You've got really screwed up idealogy. But random acts of meanness, directed at a perfect stranger? That I will never, EVER understand.

Something I can understand -- random acts of kindness. Now THOSE make sense. You don't have to know your neighbors to feel great sweeping up the leaves from their porch. You don't have to know the person at the grocery store to get a real high by giving the cashier $10 to go toward the next person in line's purchase. You don't have to have any idea if it will even be noticed to feel satisfaction for picking up garbage on the side of the road.

Random acts of kindness make sense for everyone. For the selfless, giving type -- folks like my wonderful Ben -- they just fit the bill. For the selfish, what's-in-it-for-me type like me -- there's LOTS in it for me. A warm fuzzy feeling and brownie points in heaven all for something I'm not obligated to do and yet can accomplish at my leisure in just a few minutes time? Yes, please.

I can't do anything about the losers who spend their time doing mean things for no apparent reason. But I think I'm going to increase the time I spend doing nice things for strangers or no one in particular. At the very least, maybe I can shift some of that karma away from Ben so people start doing mean things to me instead. Ben will just take it. I'll hunt those jerkwads down and make them PAY. And THAT would be worth thousands of good deeds in my book.