My daughter acquired her first (and so far, only) surfboard from a party of complete strangers in a beach colony in Mexico one vacation. It would have cost us several hundred dollars. She got her own firat guitar from an acquaintance (not a stranger) in a similar way.

A man I can't identify, buty who was a friend of my parents, told me not to worry, that I would "make it", whhatever that meant, when I was too young to even worry about the question, but he was so encouraging that I have always remembered it.

A man I didn't know appeared out of the mist on the coast highway at Big Sur in 1963 and stopped to help -- he singlehandedly recovered my motorscooter, using a cable winch he had on the front of his Jeep -- from the side of the cliff 50 feet below. Where, I might add, it had been thrown by another stranger from the side of the road where I had left it to look for help with a flat tire.