I was sitting on the sidewalk talking to a guy living outside near the old Canadian Tire store yesterday when this man pulled up to offer us hot turkey soup. He said he’d gotten in the habit of making a big pot, but it was too much now that the kids had grown. At first I declined the soup, conscious that I’d be taking a bowl away from someone who needed it a lot more than me. But I also heard the inadvertent status-signalling in my reply, as if I was saying, “Thanks, but don’t mistake me as being poor like my friend here.” I didn’t like the feeling. So when this man said hey, no worries if you’re not homeless, you can still have some soup, I took it. And suddenly me and the guy I’d been talking to were no longer a nosy reporter type and a stranger sharing the story of his long, hard life, we were just two people having a good conversation over lunch. Whoever you are, soup man, thanks for that random act of kindness.