Reddit User Restores Faith in Mankind

I’m usually a cynical guy when it comes to human nature. I believe that most people will do whatever they can to better themselves, at the cost of almost anyone else. This lack of trust is an issue that I am trying to work on as it has not been helpful to my life at all, well not as far as I can tell. Some of you may know this, but overcoming trust issues is not an easy thing to do. Add in the fact that as a writer, and a bit of a loner anyways, I spend the majority of time at home with my girlfriend and my Sam Dogg; and we have us a recipe for some long-standing trust issues.

I tell myself that thanks to my constant online activity, the lack of a social life is not detrimental to me all that much. I am wrong. I don’t know for a fact that I am wrong, but I am pretty gosh darn sure that I am. Sure, I talk to people and have friends, but can we say that any of that online interaction is really helping me deal with my distrust in the human race as whole? No.

How can it? I don’t have to really trust anybody because I have no reason to really rely on people over the internet. Recently there have been a handful of creatives that have let me down online, so apparently my interactions have the complete opposite effect on my trust issues. That was, until last week…

I was bouncing around one of my new favorite time wasting sites one day, Reddit.com (/r/zombies to be exact). We were talking a little about The Zombie Survival Guide when someone brought up the Newsflesh trilogy. I informed this Reddit user that I have never read the Newsflesh trilogy, but I will check it out whenever I can afford a reader. I hit submit and clicked away from Reddit, happily going about my business and forgetting all about the exchange.

A little bit later I went back to kill some more time at Reddit and noticed I had a message. This account is new, so a message is still exciting. I opened it and almost had to change my pants right then and there. The Redditor that informed me of the Newsflesh trilogy had offered to give me his old Kindle 3 3G!

Bullshit, I says! No, shit. Totally true guys.

Apparently he had bought it for himself, but then received a Kindle Fire for Christmas. The Kindle 3 was just extra battery life, so he offered to send it to me. I figured there was a catch somewhere, so I responded back something to the effect of how great that would be, but expecting a sales pitch to come back.

After a few back and forth messages, I gave him my address. ‘You did what?!’ I’m a dude and broke, so I wasn’t too worried about this person doing anything or robbing me. I could not really fathom any reason that this person would be lying, other than just to entertain himself for a moment. I was informed the next day that it was in the mail.

So I wait. I would love to tell you that I had totally forgotten about it, but that would be a lie. In the back of my mind, that is all I thought about. I tried to think of every conceivable reason why this Reddit user would be messing with me like this. Was he going to try to rob me? There are four people and a zoo in this house with little worth stealing. That did not seem a very likely scenario. Murder? Ummm... This isn’t CSI or something. No, there was no reason that I could think of.

Then one day a box is delivered to my door. It is a taped up Harley Davidson Doc Marten shoe box. Paranoia seeps in for a moment, or maybe it was the bowl I just smoked, and I suddenly though ‘Bomb’. I grab something close to me, a nail file I believe, and slowly cut open the tape. Once I was sure that I was acting stupid, I open the box to find some canned chili, noodles, ramen, and an Amazon Kindle 3 3G with a leather case.

I have thanked the Reddit user many times, and he swears he wants nothing in return. All he told me to do is ‘Pay it forward’. That I will do. Thank you, Reddit user. You have helped restore a slight bit of faith back into the human race for this stoner.