Now that I am a junior, I get one of those dingy, super-small lockers in the old part of the school instead of a nice, big one that the rest of the grades use. The most annoying consequence, however, was that my old locker shelf didn’t fit. On the first day of school, when I tried to ram the locker shelf into my locker, I ended up breaking the wire, hurting my fingers and getting the obnoxious thing was stuck inside my locker at a really weird angle. It put a real damper on my first day of school to find my books and folders tumbling out of my locker due to my completely crooked shelf.

So imagine my shock when I opened my locker a day later to find a gently-used, neatly folded locker shelf, placed innocently on top of my disarray of books. It was a locker shelf that I had little trouble fitting into my locker. I was stunned. My first thought was that one of my friends had done it. I had complained about my sore fingers from trying to push in the oversized locker shelf to some friends and I knew some had locker shelves they didn’t use. But then I realized, I had never told a single friend my combination. My next thought was that it had been one of my parents. But they didn’t do it either. So who could have possibly done this for me? My friends suggested a number of theories, everything from the janitor had done it or I had actually done it in my sleep. There was no solution.

To this day, it remains one of the greatest mysteries in my personal history.

But whoever he or she is had done one of the nicest acts I’ve ever received. I was already feeling tense about the start of junior year, and knowing that I couldn’t fit all my new textbooks into my locker and would have to go hunt for a fitting locker shelf worsened those tensions. When I think of that person, I always refer to him or her as my Locker Shelf Angel, someone who had made a tiring day of junior year beautiful. I’ve spent weeks wondering about who this person is and trying to figure out how to thank this person, but all in vain. So I’ve stopped thinking about this mystery man (or woman) and I’ve focused on something else: how to pay it forward.

In seventh grade, we watched the film “Pay It Forward” about a young boy who launches a goodwill movement where the recipient of a favor does a good deed for three others rather than paying the favor back. The chain impact of his good deeds result in giving a homeless man a place to sleep, convincing a woman not to commit suicide, saving a girl’s life in a hospital and protecting a friend from being bullied. Paying it forward takes one random act of kindness and multiplies it to other acts of kindness to others. It creates a habit of doing nice things for others without expecting anything in return. And as I have experienced, nothing is more potent in transforming a mood than receiving a random act of kindness.

Pay it forward acts start small. You can give someone a pick-me-up gift, shovel a neighbor’s driveway, pay for someone’s meal when eating out or say something nice to a stranger. Paying it forward can be applied to our technology-oriented era, too. Write an inspirational blog, type a good review about a restaurant you like or post encouraging comments on a social media website. And if someone wants to repay you for something, tell him or her to pay it forward.

Let’s do the math. If you do something nice for three people who each do something nice for three more people who each do something nice for three more people and continue that one more time, that’s 120 people you just affected. Think about how far-reaching your actions can go.

So I encourage you to pay it forward. You may inspire and indirectly affect dozens of people…or you may just make a person smile every time she opens her locker.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Helena at [email protected].