When I was 7, “Santa” left a Gameboy in front of our door. My parents had no clue who gifted it, but I remember Mom tearing up when she saw it. Dad had always suspected it was from a family friend.
Last year, Dad passed. Mom came to me and revealed something I didn’t expect. She told me the truth about that Christmas morning.
It wasn’t Santa, and it wasn’t a family friend either. It was someone we barely knew. A man named Mr.
Delaney. He lived two houses down from us. Quiet guy, lived alone, always wore a hat even in summer.
Apparently, a week before Christmas that year, Mom had run into Mr. Delaney at the corner store. She had been crying.
Money was tight, Dad had just been laid off, and they couldn’t afford any gifts. She didn’t mean to share all of it with him, but he noticed and asked gently, “Everything okay?”
She brushed it off at first, but Mr. Delaney insisted.
Eventually, she told him. Not the whole story, just enough to explain the tears. He didn’t say much, just gave her a kind nod and told her to take care.
She never imagined he would do anything beyond that. Then Christmas came, and the Gameboy was there. No note.
Just a little red bow on top. I lost my mind with joy. It was the only gift I got that year, and I treasured it like gold.
My parents never figured out who left it, but it lit something in our home. It gave us hope. Hearing this after all these years hit me harder than I expected.
I was 29 when Dad passed, and I thought I knew all the stories. But this one? It came out of nowhere.
I asked Mom why she waited so long to tell me. She said she had promised Mr. Delaney not to say a word while he was alive.
Apparently, a few years after that Christmas, she found out it really was him. He confessed when he came by one afternoon with some fresh tomatoes from his garden. He said he grew up poor too.
And when he saw her that day at the store, something told him to do something—quietly, without credit. “He didn’t want thanks,” Mom said. “He wanted to remind someone that good things still happen.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks.
This small, quiet man gave a gift that meant more than he ever realized. That Gameboy was the start of everything for me. It sparked my love for games, for tech.
I ended up going into game design, starting my own small company with my best friend. And that life—my job, my passion—it all traced back to that single act. That night, I looked up Mr.
Delaney online. He’d passed away three years earlier. No kids.
No wife. Just a short obituary and a picture of him smiling beside a tomato plant. I stared at that photo for a long time.
I wanted to do something, anything, to honor him. A week later, I posted a story online about the Gameboy and what Mom had told me. I didn’t expect much—maybe a few likes from friends.
But the post exploded. Thousands of shares. People started tagging their own “Mr.
Delaneys” in the comments. Stories of strangers helping out, silent acts of kindness, anonymous gifts. I felt overwhelmed.
It was like the world needed this reminder—especially now. People messaged me saying they were going to do something kind that week, in his memory. I printed out his picture and framed it above my desk.
