A 59-year-old Tennessee native was touched when a young man she'd never met before insisted on paying for her purchase in line at the gas station. She snapped a selfie with the stranger on the forecourt and claims it’s about time the goodness of her city’s youth made headlines.
On the morning of Dec. 28, 2021, Olivia Binns-Jennings of Memphis pulled into her local Marathon gas station on Summer Avenue, in the Binghampton neighborhood near Midtown. There were two young men buying snacks and drinks in line ahead of her.
“We began a conversation, just having some good fun and laughter,” Olivia told The Epoch Times. “One of the young men offered to pay $20 for my gas as I was waiting for them to complete their purchase. I said, ‘Thank you but I have it.’ The young man insisted.”
As Olivia was pumping gas to her car, it occurred to her that she wanted others to know how a random act of kindness can go a “miraculously long way.”
“I’m merely trying to get a message out here that the media has been so focused on crime and stories about disarray,” she said. “We as a society are missing the most basic of kindnesses, especially from our younger generations.”
Olivia asked the stranger, a youth about the same age as her own son, if she could snap a photo with him and post it to Facebook.
“He agreed,” she said. “We had never met before and I have never seen him since, but I pray he knows he has touched so many people with this small gesture.”
Born and raised in Memphis, Olivia worked as a pharmacy technician for over 20 years before becoming the director of a pharmacy technician program. She has worked with young people from many different backgrounds for almost 17 years.
After the onset of the pandemic, she started working for Uber Eats part time. Olivia said she has fought cancer three times in five years and lost her home amid this battle during COVID-19, but does not feel this has any bearing on her interaction with the stranger at the gas station. What’s important, she insisted, is the fact that “youth are being overlooked” when they are performing good deeds on a daily basis.
“This story is about the way a simple act of kindness between two random people from completely different generations, in a city filled with crime, and sometimes chaos, can bring people together from all walks of life,” she said. “We are all different, and yet very much the same.”
