Kindness Really Works

Katie P., Utah, USA

Sewing a quilt in my high school sewing class proved to be harder than I’d thought. For one thing, my thread kept getting jammed in my sewing machine, but that problem was easy enough to fix. The harder problem was the swear words. Three young women in my class were working together at the next machine over, and they’d been swearing loudly the entire class period.

The idea of asking them to stop swearing intimidated me. But I’d been taught by my parents and Church leaders that people will often respond well to our invitations to do good as long as we are kind. So I took a deep breath and asked the three young women as nicely as I knew how if they could stop swearing.

Unfortunately, they didn’t take it well. The tallest one gave me a rude answer, and before I knew it, we were arguing. Eventually I gave up and went back to my sewing. Now I was frustrated with the swear words, the three young women, and myself. The last thing I’d wanted to do was start an argument.

As I brooded over my mistake, I heard the three young women swearing again and saw them bent over their machine. I could tell that their machine was jammed the same way mine had been a few minutes earlier. I walked over to their machine and quickly showed them how to fix the problem.

I could feel their eyes on me as I went back to my seat. A moment later, the tallest young woman said, “Hey, sorry about the things we said earlier. Thanks for helping us with our machine.”

“No problem,” I said with a smile. My parents and leaders are right—kindness really works!