I was in a grocery store walking down an aisle when I saw a baby shoe on the floor. A parent must have come into the store with an infant child and at some point the baby lost its satin shoe. I didn't know how long the shoe had been there, as far as I knew the parent was long gone. I wasn't about to go out of my way for something that could be nothing. 

But it was a small-medium sized grocery store, not a mega-mart or even a U.S.-size grocery store. I figured it wouldn't be going out of my way to do a scan of the aisles to look for any candidates for babies who may have lost a shoe. I noted what number aisle it was and went to the front of the store where the cashiers were and planned to walk the breadth of the store looking down the aisles to see if there were any parents with a small child.

But just as I got to the front of the store, I spotted a mother with a stroller who had already gone through the cashier and was heading out but was rummaging through the stroller looking for something. A quick glance at the baby's foot confirmed this was the baby with a missing shoe and the mother was looking for it. I got her attention somehow, mind you I was listening to music and was wearing a mask and a baseball cap so I hope I didn't look scary or crazy, and indicated for her to wait and quick-stepped down the aisle where the shoe was, retrieved it and handed it off to her and disappeared back to my browsing as quick as possible. 

I don't doubt for a second she was grateful, but didn't need to feel any personal gratitude from her. I wasn't doing her a favor, I wasn't doing any good deed. The way I saw it was here was this mother with a mystery, an unknown. It could have been my cousin at one point, it could've been my sister-in-law. Where is the shoe? The baby has one shoe, but it had another shoe, where was it? I on another hand knew the answer to the mystery. I knew where the shoe was, I had just seen it. She could backtrack her way through the store and eventually find it if it was important enough or just chalk it up as a loss (from my experience it's important enough), but I knew exactly where it was. All I did was put a mystery together with the solution in the most efficient way possible. I just shared information.

In what for me would be an ideal scenario is that she would've gone home and later that evening told her husband or other family member or friend what a great country we live in. Where people look out for each other and do selfless, considerate things out of nowhere. I don't want to gloss Taiwan over, we have our share of shit-fuck assholes and lord knows I've probably been one or felt like one or perceived as one at times, but I do know what I did wasn't an isolated incident. There is a lot more civic-mindedness than not here, which I feel has been emphasized lately by the successful response to the CCP pandemic.