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random acts of kindness

Joy

Little boy asks older skateboarder to hold his hand while he attempts a new trick

The little boy's excitement when he nails the trick is absolutely priceless.

Older skateboarder helps little boy do a trick on a ramp.

Learning a new skill is a little scary, especially if that skill includes becoming airborne for any amount of time. But without pushing the limits of gravity in sports, we wouldn't have greats like Tony Hawk and Chole Kim. Even the extreme sports and Olympic stars had to start from scratch, likely with lots of scratches, bruises and maybe even some broken bones as they learned new tricks.

When you're little and learning new skateboarding tricks, sometimes you just need the bravery of an older kid to help you push through the fear. In a video posted by CBS, a little skateboarder who appeared to be around 9 years old looked to an older skateboarder to hold his hand as he attempted a new trick.

The older boy grabbed the boy's hand and took off running along side the little boy's skateboard, eventually throwing his own skateboard under his feet to keep up.

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Sometimes humans strangers pull together for no reason other than to simply bring joy to another human.

That's what happened when Upworthy shared a request we'd been sent by a reader whose grandmother had fractured a vertebrae. Leslie Agan contacted Upworthy saying that her 90-year-old Grandma Florence needed a little pick-me-up. She had fallen on Christmas morning and fractured a vertebrae in her neck, and was "feeling depressed in rehab after being told she won't be able to go home for several months."

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via ThatWasEpic / YouTube

Juan Gonzalez, host of That Was Epic on YouTube, performed random acts of kindness for strangers by paying their rent. The looks on the recipients' faces are incredible when they learn they just received no-strings-attached cash from a stranger looking to pay it forward.

It's also interesting to note how the recipients' demeanor changes when they go from wondering why a stranger is at their door to accepting the money.

The first person to have their rent paid thinks Gonzalez is an angel.

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Despite controversial-but-compelling evidence that homework takes time away from families with little to no appreciable benefit for students, kids continue to slog through hours of school work outside the time they spend in the classroom. And despite evidence that small acts of kindness can infect a community like a positive virus, far too many kids are on either the giving or receiving end of unkind bullying on a regular basis.

Perhaps that's why an elementary school in Ireland has decided to do something radical—ditch all homework for the month of December and assign kids "acts of kindness" instead.

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