A Routine Grocery Trip Turned Into A Life-Changing Act Of Kindness

The weekly grocery shopping trip is a pretty standard routine for most Americans. A person creates a list of what they need, heads to the store to buy it and that’s pretty much it until the following week, right? 

Well, for Memphis, Tennessee resident Matt White, a routine grocery shopping trip would become anything but routine when he encountered a teenage boy in the parking lot. That encounter would eventually result in a life-changing act of kindness that’s all too often lacking in today’s hustle and bustle modern world. 

Matt White was just an ordinary guy

Matt is a 30-something guy in Memphis. He had graduated from college and was making his way through the music business as a singer/songwriter. There was nothing out of the ordinary about Matt’s weekly grocery trip. 

Kroger was his grocery store of choice. The prices were good, the produce was fresh, and it was in a somewhat upper-class neighborhood in an otherwise poor section of the city. Matt had just paid for his items and was walking out to the parking lot. When…

An encounter with a stranger

As Matt was walking out to the parking lot, a teenage boy began walking with him. The boy didn’t have any grocery bags in his hand, and the clothes he had on weren’t especially nice. It was obvious that he wasn’t at the Kroger to buy a week’s worth of groceries.

As Matt made eye contact with the teen, a barrage of different scenarios flooded his head. Was the teen going to beg for money? Perhaps he wanted directions? Nope, it was something else.