13-year-old helps an elderly man through the rain
A 13-year-old is being praised by thousands of people for his small act of kindness in Brooklyn, N.Y., after a video taken of him helping out an elderly man on his block went viral.
Lizz Ingram, who goes by ShowBiz Lizz, is a single mother of two who luckily had her phone handy, while preparing dinner at home, when her son Jordan Glover-Ingram took off down the stairs and unexpectedly ran out of the house into the pouring rain.
“My kids don’t leave the house without permission,” Ingram said, explaining that she was inclined to run after him. “I ran down the stairs and I was gonna say, ‘Wait a minute, where are you going?’ And I see that he had the umbrella, and he held it over Mr. Robinson’s head.”
The proud mom began to take a video just to be able to share it with Jordan’s father. But a few days later, she decided to post it on her Facebook page in the hopes that it might bring some light to another person’s day. What she could never have anticipated, however, was more than 4 million people viewing the video and more than 10,000 leaving positive comments — especially since taking care of others is something that’s been instilled in her and her children.
“The notion that we are supposed to be courteous at all times comes from my upbringing,” Ingram explains, referring to her childhood, when her own grandparents would have Ingram purchase household items to deliver to the homes of elderly people who didn’t show up for church. “You never know what people are able and unable to do. You never know anybody’s circumstances when you walk into their homes. You have to do things like this; it’s courteous,” her grandma would say.
And although her children may be used to the generosity that they’ve learned to display on a regular basis, all the attention this act of kindness has received makes Ingram emotional.
Jordan “doesn’t really see it the way we see it,” Ingram says of her son’s response to the viral attention. “It made me proud because society sometimes doesn’t see our young black men in this light.”
Now, Ingram is doing her part to make sure that Jordan understands the positive message that his simple act is spreading and the overall impact he can have by doing kind things.
“I try to distract them from looking at the news because some of it is not good news,” Ingram explains. “I say, ‘We can make our own good news,’ you know? You could do good things, just keep doing good things. That’s all, just be kind.”
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
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