For many moms, including Erin Bennett, Target is the happiest place on earth. But the nurse from Virginia rarely buys anything for herself. “I’ll grab a thing or two for myself,” Bennett tells Us Weekly. But she usually ends up setting her “mommy treats” to the side once everything in her cart’s been scanned. “I budget for my shopping trips,” she says. “If I’ve gone over budget, I put my items back and tell myself, ‘I’ll get them next time.’”
And that’s exactly what happened when the mother of four visited her local Target on Wednesday, October 11. Then something happened that left Bennett nearly in tears. It’s a story that’s been liked more than 71,00 times on the Love What Matters Facebook page.
“To the man in line behind me at the Gainesville Target, who saw that after hitting my grocery budget limit I decided to put back my Pumpkin Spice candle and the makeup I had picked out,” Bennet began in her open letter. “You didn’t know that I always save my stuff for last and usually end up putting it back. You didn’t know that the two fussy kids I had with me, were only two out of four. You didn’t know that I have postpartum depression from the youngest baby and that I use scent as a way to boost my mood.”
And yet, somehow the stranger “saw” her and knew exactly what she needed. “You saw me as human, not just the mom in front of you that was distracted and going way too slow. You heard me to say that I’d like to put those items back and you said you were getting them. You didn’t take no for an answer,” wrote Bennet. “You told me I deserved it when I started to tear up.”
Bennett signed off by promising to practice random acts of kindness. “I like to pay it forward by paying for the person in line behind me who waved me in first,” she tells Us. “And I keep blankets in my car in case I see someone that could benefit from them.”
