WEEK IN RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

Week in Random Acts of Kindness

Extry extry, read all about it! Nora and I have a nose for news, but nothing really happened this week so we decided to make some headlines of our own by performing random acts of kindness around our community. At first, we wanted it to be anonymous, but then we realized we could extract social capital from telling people about it! So here’s a list of all the kindnesses we did, take notes <333

1

Blackmailed my professor! What better way to say “homework SUCKS” than to hack your professor’s email, find out that his kid doesn’t know she’s adopted, and threaten to release that information unless he cancels your class’s midterm? When I told my class what I did, everyone stood up and cheered and now I’m Prom Queen Forever! Then Dierk Marzipan, the hottest boy in school, kissed me and broke up with his girlfriend (aka my nemesis, Madeleine Albright Jr.), on the spot. Just goes to show that adoption is kind of cringey and if you put good energy out into the world, it comes back to you :)

2

Got my dentist a birthday present! She made it weird, but I guess some people just don’t know how to accept generosity.

3

I cleaned the big cauldron my roommates and I use to cook all our meals! Listen, no one likes to be on Big Cauldron Duty, but someone has to get in there and clean its comically huge walls. I was supposed to do it last month but I have trauma around cauldrons (my mom was a witch). This week I had finally gathered the courage, so I went in there with a loofah and scrubbed until I could see my face in it. Looking deeper, I saw my innermost desires floating around my reflection—being the soccer captain next year, achieving the Guinness World Record for Humblest Girl, visiting Maine, owning a ladder—they were all nearly within my grasp. But just as I reached out for them, they dissolved into dust, and I was left staring at the flat, unremarkable contours of my face (I’m a woman of mid-experience). That night, I was set upon with dreams of glory, power, a version of myself that was almost unrecognizably radiant. I wanted it desperately, I wanted to be that person from within my marrow. I felt myself make some sort of deal, and the next day I awoke to find all my dreams had come true. Plus I have pyrokinesis!

4

As a level 10 maxi-empath, I can tell when one of my friends needs a haircut. That’s why, yesterday, I gave free mullets to every member of my improv troupe while they were asleep (I say asleep; it’s more of a coma that they’re all in after our bus to the East Coast Improvapalooza competition crashed because I made the bus driver turn around and make eye contact with me so I could ‘read his energy’ and make sure he wasn’t mad at me).

5

I made a zine! Zines are important to society because they sort of dare to ask the question, “what if we took the MAGA out of magazine?” I’m a liberal, which means I own a mug that says “Male Tears” on the side, I named my cat Covfefe, and it totally gives me the ick when my aunt says something homophobic. Zines are like my own personal revolution, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that radical kindness can look like giving copies of your self-published poetry to all of your friends, emailing them to ask for “feedback :),” and then when they do give you critiques, cutting them out of your life completely/trying to get them canceled on Twitter (#KirstenIsOverParty).

6

I gave a home to an adorable 8-year-old black lab who was going to be put down at a local shelter. Not my home, but still! I bought her a gorgeous apartment in Pittsburgh’s historic Glurf District and just kind of put her there. Don’t worry, she’ll live out the rest of her days in style—I left her a closet full of authentic costumes that were used in the TV series Girls (she’s a total Jessa).

7

I didn’t cyberbully my sister on Club Penguin for a whole week! My sister is kind of like if a butt was a person, and she deserves bad things. She’s been really confident and coming into her own recently, and everyone keeps saying she looks like a younger, prettier version of me. So, every week, I log into Club Penguin and pretend to be a different 14-year-old boy, get her to fall in love with justin89, and then break up with her because “u r too ugly :(”. It’s definitely taken her down a notch! But this week, I didn’t do that, which is kind of just my way of being the change.