Crossroads Middle School, Pennsylvania

My PIF Experience
BY: Nichole

"Thank you so much for helping me. I really appreciate it!" Most people would enjoy hearing this. That's what happened to me. I learned about Pay It Forward (PIF) in school. Then I had an assignment where I had to find three people that I could PIF for and then write down how I felt everyday while helping them. My three PIF's were, vacuuming the house for my mom, cleaning my sister's rabbit's cage for her, and babysitting for my neighbor.

My first PIF was vacuuming the house for my mom because she had so much to do and didn’t have time to do it. So before she got home, I got the vacuum and cleaned the house. When she got home, as soon as she walked in, all she could say was, “Wow!”. I could tell she was surprised to see that I vacuumed the whole house for her. “Thank you so much. I really appreciate you helping me out.” Then I told her all about PIF. “PIF is something I learned about in school. It's when somebody helps three people and then they help three people. So soon everybody is helping each other.” “That’s really interesting. I have never heard of it being called PIF.” I think my mom will PIF because she likes helping other people and by what she said after I told her about PIF, she was obviously interested when I told her about PIF.

My second PIF was cleaning out my sister's rabbit cage for her because it needed cleaned and she had to work. So when she went to work, I cleaned out the rabbit cage for her. When she got home from work, she thanked me for cleaning the cage for her. Then I told her about PIF. “PIF is something I learned about in school. It's when somebody helps three people and then they help three people. So soon everybody is helping each other.” I think that she will PIF because a lot of people help her out and she likes to repay them. For example, when I helped her clean out her car, she repaid me by helping me clean out the pool. So in a way, she had already PIF'ed to other people. I could also tell when the rabbit started hopping around and playing in his cage, that he appreciated the clean cage too!

My last PIF was baby-sitting my neighbor’s four-year-old daughter. Mrs. S was saying about how she needed to clean the house but never had the time because she always had to watch her daughter. So I told her that I would watch her daughter for her so that she could clean her house. After she was done cleaning the house, she asked me why I volunteered to watch her daughter instead of doing something else. So I told her about PIF. “PIF is something I learned about in school. It's when somebody helps three people and then they help three people. So soon everybody is helping each other.” I could tell that she was interested because she listened to everything I had to say about PIF and even asked me more about it. I think she will PIF because she seems like a caring and nice person that would want to PIF.

If someone else wanted to PIF, I would tell them that they need to be prepared for something that might not work out. Also to always think positive. I had to think of other PIF's a bunch of times because something didn't work out the way I planned. It is also a good idea to plan out what you are going to say when you tell the person about PIF. Also, make sure you're prepared for anything. So if something doesn’t work out with a PIF, maybe you can fix it. Overall, it was a great experience to see how much other people appreciate you helping them out.