Mom buys $400 worth of text books for a stranger in honor of her homeless drug addict son.

The news is full of moments of cruelty on the massive and personal scale. There are politicians passing xenophobic legislation, stories of cruelty, and a generally grim outlook on humanity.

However, for most individual stories of evil and callous, there is a less reported on anecdote about someone going out of their way to express kindness. These often get less attention, because kindness doesn't pose a threat like a killer on the loose, so it doesn't have the same urgency.

However, wholesome stories often take off on social media because people are looking for narratives outside the large looming clouds of despair found in major headlines.

For this reason, a very wholesome Tumblr post by the user beepboop-its-a-robot quickly took off.

"STORY TIME:

I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car (OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!), she piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (“Wooooosh” she says, making a wave gesture with her hand)."