Trending Now
It’s like, part of human nature to want to do or say something when another human being is upset or overwhelmed or just dealing with life stuff that can pile up in awkward ways.
We say “if you ever need anything, let me know,” or “if there’s anything I can do, just holler,” but most of the time we don’t expect people to take us up on it.
Sometimes they do, though, and if you’ve ever wondered how that might turn out, these 15 people are sharing their stories!
15. You’d do it for each other.
All. of. the. time.
I do favors for people and people do favors for me. It works so nice. The trick is to tell that to people yourself and when they take you up on it, deliver!
Last time I needed help and reached out when I bought a giant Ikea closet and the seller and I realized that there is no way we can take it apart and load it into the movie truck in the time window we had.Called a buddy I rarely meet in person, we text a lot and send memes, thats it.
Called him up, said “Sleazy, can you help me with a closet real quick? I’m at address.”
He just answered: “Sure.”
Drove 35 minutes, helped for 10-15 minutes, had a beer and drove back home.
I’d do the same for him.
14. What a great guy.
Years ago, when my dad died, his “right hand man” at work offered to do anything to help us.
We found out we had to move on 24 hours notice, 400 miles away.
Mom was too hesitant to ask. We didn’t have any options on so little time. So I insisted she call him.
He shows up, not 4 hours later, with literally everyone from his job site. With all their pickups, and a few small moving trucks/trailers. We vacated within 24 hours easily.
I’ve completely lost touch with them, but I’ll never forget them for doing that.
It was completely surprising to me because that guy had complained about my dad quite a few times, but always helped him out, even when doing personal things for him on his off days.
13. When you know, you know.
My (then) pregnant wife started bleeding from somewhere down there at about 20 weeks. Having suffered a miscarriage before, we both had obvious fears.
The closest family was an hour away. We called 3x “Normie” friends at 11:00pm at night to see if they can watch our 2 year old on the monitor while family arrived. No answers.
Jumped into a discord group chat where a few old WoW Guildies were hanging out, playing some Apex. Asked one who I knew lived close by, who was a father to 2x girls already, and would’ve understood/been safe. He was there in under 5, and we were on our way to the hospital in no time.
Absolute bro. No miscarriage- just a bit of blood coming from the placenta. Second baby girl delivered 18 weeks later, with 10 little fingers and 10 little toes! 🥰
Sorry for the Stealing your apex buddy, boys!
12. That was a letdown.
A relative of an acquaintance needed help recovering family photos from a broken pc. I was just going to do a quick repair and bill the guy, but I felt really bad for him so I took the extra time to consult him about backing up data and suggested an external drive.
We found one for him, but he was waffling on the price so I cut his bill down a bit and told him to just order it while I was there. At that point I think he realized I wasn’t benefitting from any further contact and he offered to help me out if I ever needed a hand with anything electrical as he was a retired electrician.
Short version is I had some light switches that when flicked would flicker several other rooms nearby lights. I asked this guy if he could just come assess what I needed and what it should cost for me whenever he had time. He came over for about 30 minutes, tinkered with the wall plates and said “I don’t know” then went home having repaid his blood debt.
11. Did you convert, though?
One time my dad told me to change this light bulb in my house and it was pretty high up and I definitely needed some help so I wouldn’t fall to my death.
Well these Jehovah’s Witness guys knock on my door, give their pitch and then they end it with “thanks for talking to us, is there anything that we can help you with?”, so I asked “actually.. would you guys mind helping me change a lightbulb?” and they were more than happy to help me out. Super nice guys.
10. This is how you human.
My wife and I moved into a new apartment when she was about 6 months pregnant, having shared a fully furnished house with her brother and his wife before this. We had all the usual help from friends and family lugging all of our stuff up two flights of stairs, and we had managed to set up essentials like a couple of camping chairs and a bed on the first day. They left us to ourselves to finish the remainder of the unpacking, and we had almost no food and no proper furniture, so I had plans for massive shopping trips to stock our kitchen and new living space in the coming days.
The next day, while I worked unpacking and reorganizing our new space, my wife came out of the bathroom totally pale and said “we need to go now”. She was bleeding substantially, and the doctor confirmed she was already significantly dilated, and the baby was coming whether we were ready or not.
I sent a panicked message to a friend who had a preemie herself a few months before this, and she spent the remainder of her night talking through what we could expect and providing a listening ear for anything we didn’t understand from the doctor or what NICU we should ask to go to in the area. She was incredibly helpful, but we ultimately found out our baby couldn’t be stabilized after birth and we lost her that night.
That same friend offered her condolences and offered anything she could do to help, as she knew we had just moved. When I asked her to pick up some basic essentials like bread and cold cuts to handle meals for the next couple days, she instead asked for my full grocery list. It included things like furniture I planned to pick up and the ice cube trays our new freezer was missing, but I assumed she’d only be getting the food I mentioned.
The next morning, when my wife was released and we went home to a quiet apartment full of boxes, without so much as working internet and or cell service, our friend showed up on her lunch break from work with a full car. Bags were literally tumbling out of her backseat when she opened the door.
She purchased everything on our list, from the food to the ice cube trays to a coffee table I had been looking at. She threw in extra stuff that she knew we’d need too, like fresh fruits and vegetables so we didn’t feel the need to eat like crap in the midst of our mourning. She didn’t want me to find out, but she forgot the receipt in one of the bags and I saw that she spent hundreds of dollars on everything. We were completely overcome by her actions. I managed to wait until after she left, but I absolutely sobbed. I had never seen such generosity from a friend, and she would hardly let us say anything more than a simple thank you. To this day, I have never felt such appreciation and compassion from another person, and I carry that gratefulness with me any time I find myself depressed about everything else that happened during that time.
9. That is some story.
My dog put her head through one of the panes of glass in my front door trying to eat some Mormons once. They were super apologetic and insisted on fixing it. One stayed and helped clean up while the other ran around the corner to a glass shop.
When he got back I gave him the tools he asked for and he had the broken plane fixed in under 45mins. I just sat and talked with guy #1 about life while he played with the dog that tried to kill him.
I’m not religious, which I told them, and they said that’s fine and they didn’t want to force anything on me I didn’t want. All in all they were some of the nicest people I’ve ever come across.
8. Everyone’s a winner.
This is a reverse story.
Someone on Facebook was trying to get out of an abusive relationship. She had left the person many times only to come back to the person. I knew the person from years before but I really only knew her through a friend. I had seen the person in real life maybe twice.
I gave the offer “if there is anything I can do for you” in a Facebook message. Too my surprise she said yes can I stay with you for a few months. I said sure since I had the spare room and my friend that was close friends with her said she was a good person. I let her into my home for 4 months.
In that time she had a friend come over for her birthday and little did I know I world be meeting my future wife and life mate. We have now been together for 8 years with our love going strong. So my offer really paid off in my case despite the fact I was really scared to have this relative stranger move into my spare bedroom.
My friend was right. She is a good person. Unfortunately she did move back in with the abusive boyfriend for about a year until another situation broke out and she moved out permanently. She is now in a new relationship in a different part of the country with someone else and has been for many years now. Someone who is not abusive.
So hurray for both of us.
7. People usually mean it.
schools for senior year. He stayed with them for senior year.
A friend of mine who did senior portrait photography was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I’m an art photographer. I told him that I’d do anything to help. He said he didn’t want to leave his clients in a lurch. I spent about three months finishing his season.
My friend with pancreatic cancer was supposed to get married in June but the doctors told him that he might not make it to June or be in any shape to get married then if he did. Everybody pulled out all the stops to make his wedding happen fast. The venue, the caterer, and especially the photographer who we didn’t know but whose work we admired. She was originally supposed to handle just shooting and deliver RAW files. She founded a videographer who volunteered to do it free, added a second shooter, and she did the editing.
6. Sounds like he helped himself.
A relative of mine had passed away, leaving me the entire estate. Part of that was a boat. When I was at the house sorting things out, a neighbor came over and introduced himself. I hadn’t met him before, as he had just moved in a year earlier. At one point, we ended up talking that boat.
As we were talking, he said he had to get back to the wife and to let him know if there was anything he could do. Jokingly, I asked him if he wanted to buy the boat and gave him a price. He sort of laughed as most people would do. About an hour later, he sent me a text asking if I was serious about selling the boat. (When he left, he went straight home and asked his wife and then went to the bank to get the money.) I said yes, and he had the money to me that evening and took possession of the boat.
5. We all need help sometimes.
A few years ago I was going through a rough patch and one night I got caught up late at work. I was in a panic about letting my dog out and getting her dinner because my break was only 20 minutes and I lived across town. A friend lived nearby and I asked her to take out the dog and feed her. The friend sent me a pic of my pup happily prancing in the yard.
A pretty simple favor in the grand scheme of things, but the peace of mind in that moment and time in my life was worth so much. It also made me better about asking for help when I need it. My friend was happy to do it and it made a huge difference for me, I learned I wasn’t a burden for needing help sometimes.
4. Just people helping people.
When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, the first months were a pain and she went through a lot of tests and treatment options. We were always nervous with the results and had consultations and tests booked all around. Amidst all that, we forgot to pay our electricity bills.
It was not a money issue, we just completely forgot about it. We pay our electricity bill using the company’s app, and the app didn’t warn you about late bills. They used letters for that and, since we did everything with the app, we never even saw the notices they’d send you before cutting your energy.
Well, they went to our apartment to cut the electricity and we were shocked. We asked them if we could just pay it immediately, but the system had a 24-hour time to register the payment, so we would be without energy for that period. When we were talking to the electricity company guy about it, a neighbor passed by and asked if he could help. We just answered we had no idea and explained the situation.
We were new in the building, so we didn’t know our neighbors at all. This 60-year old man with grey hair and a somewhat surfer look to him just mobilized an entire operation with his fellow neighbors to grant us electricity. In less than an hour, we had power extensions coming from our back and front windows from apartments of different floors to feed some of our home appliances. Since it is not advised to use refrigerators in extensions, a group of old ladies just came in and shared our refrigerator’s food among themselves to store it temporarily. They even cooked us our meal after all this stuff.
I got to know the 60-year old surfer during the time I lived there and he was really something. Both him and his brother lived in the same building and both helped me. The surfer guy was actually very active in the surfing scene during the 60s and 70s and had an amazing story of a few years past coming out of cocaine addiction. His older brother was, surprisingly, a video game enthusiast, but mostly hooked on somehow historical games (honestly, I would never expect to discuss the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 with a guy almost 70 years old, but that happened).
Well, in the end I got to know half the building on a single day. Loved living there and I really miss living in a building where everybody knows each other like that. The one I live in today is better in quality overall, but so impersonal.
3. This is great advice.
I had twins 3 months ago. I took all the help. I am TAKING all the help. Some great advice i got was this…
If someone offers help, give them three options. An easy, medium and hard. For example: Would you be willing to bring me coffee, help with laundry, or watch the girls for a few hours while I take a nap? That way, they choose and you dont feel like youre putting them out. Its been amazing!!! People genuinely love being there for others and realizing i can take help has been a huge area of growth for me.
2. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
I was put on complete bed rest during month 5 while pregnant with our second kiddo. That means you stay in bed/on couch, lie on your left side as much as possible, absolutely do not get up unless it’s to use the bathroom, and resign yourself to showering only 2 times a week. For four months. Did I mention I had a 5 year old, too? And that of course me being on bed rest meant my rockstar husband was working much longer hours, and taking care of all the food prep and house cleaning??
So here I am, spending all day in bed for months, trying to entertain a 5 year old all day, and going slowly crazy. My Mom came up several times a week to help, but she couldn’t just move in (my father is older and has several chronic health issues). Plus I normally helped serval times a week with taking care of my grandmother, and of course couldn’t do that. Everyone was stretched to capacity. And we were all also emotionally drained from the terror that we might lose the baby (I’d had a miscarriage earlier in the year we conceived her.)
My closest friends and our life group from church asked “what can we do?” and I swallowed my pride and said “Anything. Everything.” These women came over with food. Prepped lunches for me and my daughter that she could reach in the fridge while my husband was gone during the day. Cleaned my house. Did our laundry. Their husbands mowed our grass and did small repairs my husband just didn’t have time to do right then. Couples took turns hosting our daughter for play dates both some during the day to give me a break AND some in the evenings to give my husband one. And then? They set up the entire nursery. Painted the walls, put our crib back together, hung the art on the walls, made sure my breast pump was still in good working order, hung all the clothes, sorted the diapers, painted a small table…it was amazing.
To this day everyone still feels a bit proprietary toward our youngest (just turned 4) – they all invested a lot of time and energy in that pregnancy!
1. Just be there.
We had plans to hang out and I cancelled because I got very sad. I needed someone to be with me while I broke down and I didn’t want to bother anyone while sad , but I asked if they could come anyway and they came. they stayed. They listened and they didn’t judge me in the slightest.
They even checked up the next few days and met up with me again. I was so worried that I was burdening them and I have really bad anxiety about being too much but They made me feel so normal and justified in those moments. It really made me recognize that my anxiety is just that, anxiety.
You should always be prepared for someone to say yes to these offers, you know?
Has anyone ever taken you up on the vague offer of help? Tell us how it went in the comments!
