On the Third Day of Christmas my true love gave to me 3 strangers serviced

Super Secret Stranger Service Date Night. Alright now try and guess what this is. I bet you got it right. A whole date night dedicated to secret service you do for absolute strangers! Sound a little bit crazy? Well it is but it’s something I look forward to every year. The funny thing about it is how it spawned.

About two years ago Allan and I were trying to come up with ideas of service we could render to someone else during the holidays. We didn’t have a lot of time or money to spend but we wanted to do something special. Allan was in school full time and working full time. I was working a part time job and taking care of a new baby and toddler. Our schedules were hectic and Christmas crept closer and closer.

One of the only date nights we had planned was our 4^th anniversary Dec. 18^th. I was looking forward to it and I had just assumed that Allan had planned something special. But by no fault of Allan’s he had not planned anything or made any dinner reservations. So my sister came over to tend and Allan and I got in to our car only to say what should we do now? I was disappointed that we had nothing to do on our date.

After talking about all the possibilities of our night Allan had an idea of what we could do. He said that rather than spend the money on ourselves that we should do service for strangers. I was not on board with this idea. In fact I’m more of a leave it on the doorstep so no one sees me kind of a girl. I like doing service but I like even more when the person doesn’t have any clue where it came from. But Allan is all about doing it on the fly in front of them and seeing their reactions.

I will be the first to admit that I was more concerned with what I wanted to do rather than doing service. I felt entitled to having a good anniversary and this was not my idea of a pampering romantic experience that it should be. So with a bit of disappointment in me we left to find someone to serve.

That’s an interesting concept. How do you find someone who is in need of your help when you have no idea where you’re going or who to help? This is where your imagination kicks in. Allan suggested that first we stop at a gas station and fill up someone’s tank. 

So we pulled in to a 7-11 right close to student housing. We waited to launch our attack. We really wanted to scope someone out beforehand so that it would be easy to swipe our card and take off. Allan took the lead on this one because remember – I don’t like the giving confrontation. Although I did roll down the window so I could hear everything that was happening and could shout Merry Christmas as we rode out.

As fate would have it, a cute probably 19 year old pulled up her rusty car to the gas pump right next to us. She jumped out of her car and then Allan did the same. He went up to her and said “Can we buy your gas?” She looked over at me and I waved. She was extremely stunned and said “what?” Allan said again “we want to buy you gas.” She still looked confused and said “sure.” Allan then swiped his card and asked her what kind of gas it took and opened her gas cap. The young girl then said “this is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.” Allan just turned and said “Have a Merry Christmas.” Then he jumped in the car and we waved as we sped off. This was not only fun but felt good.

Next we decided to head to the mall because surely there would be a lot of people there and we thought we could think of some way to give. Sure enough it was a busy night and there were shoppers everywhere. We decided that we needed to give something away. So we went to See’s Candy to purchase a box of delicious chocolates and a few candy items. As we were walking in the mall we saw a lady at a gift wrapping station. Allan came up with a brilliant idea!

We walked up to the kiosk and asked her how much it would be to wrap the chocolate box. She looked at it and said it would be $3.00. “Ok my husband said. Go ahead and wrap it.” She looked at the box and said “Oh these are my favorite chocolates. Whoever gets these is lucky! Is this for a party gift?” Allan and I immediately smiled at each other and said “yea, something like that.” She wrapped the chocolates in beautiful red paper while we made small talk. This was her second job she worked at night to make some extra Christmas money for her family. She taught at a High school during the day and she had a few teenagers. Then she finished the package and asked for the $3.00. We handed her the money and in return she handed us the box of chocolates. Allan looked at her and said “Merry Christmas, these are for you.” Allan then handed her back the chocolates. She gasped and said “what?” “These are for you and we want you to have a Merry Christmas” he said. Then we waved and quickly walked away. It was the exact reaction we had wanted.

The more we gave that night, the happier I became. I still wanted to have a romantic anniversary but the service we were doing trumped any dinner we could have had. Our night didn’t go perfectly mind you. A few words of advice if you ever want to give candy away: Make sure you don’t single a child out and then try to sneak it to him when his parent isn’t watching. Not only is this creepy but Allan got a confused stare when the father caught him doing it. I still chuckle about this.

Also don’t use the McDonald’s drive thru to buy someone else’s food. We pulled up to the drive thru and they asked what we wanted and we told them we didn’t want anything. We just were waiting for someone to pull up behind us so we could buy their food as a service. Then they informed us that they couldn’t permit us to do that because they are timed on how fast the order is taken, paid for, and when you leave, so if we stayed in the drive thru that would ding their numbers. I still can’t believe they told us that!

Instead we stopped by a Wendy’s and they obliged to let us wait however long we wanted in order to pay for someone else’s food. This was also fun because after we pulled out the car we had paid for pulled back around in to the drive thru after getting his food. We like to think that he was paying it forward to someone else.

This started off our tradition of Super Secret Stranger Service Date Night! This year we have involved other couples as a means to share the joy and raise the money to do more random acts of kindness. Whatever it might be in your own home I hope that you will start your own traditions of service and that you enjoy every minute of it. As I learned with my anniversary, it doesn’t always have to be about yourself in order for you to feel happiness, charity, and love. All it take is service.