HEARTWARMING: When this teacher lost everything, his students came together to agree to stop spray-painting the words “Old, Unlovable Shit” on his car.

Get ready to have tears jerked from your goddamn face.

A high-school teacher named Mackenzie Donald had found himself in an extremely rough patch, having lost almost all his possessions due to a series of fairly shambolic investments. Though, who among us could have foreseen that a company selling necklaces of nail clippings would go under so quickly? This forced him into living in his car, showering on school premises, sifting through garbage, and challenging strangers to footraces for money.

Already, you may be experiencing a heavily mild sense of sorrow for this educator. Maybe the tears have already begun gathering on the rim of your lower eyelid. Well, stop those tears immediately. The sad-tears are the wrong tears for this particular story. What you want are ‘aww, isn’t that sweet’-tears.

Eventually, the news of his living conditions made its way to his students. When they heard that their teacher, their guide, their helping hand showing them the path to a brighter future, was down on his luck, they came together to try to make life just a little bit better for their mentor.

All of his students announced a verbal agreement to stop spray-painting the words “Old, Unlovable Shit” on his car. A truly heartwarming gesture. And one that had not gone unnoticed.

“Yeah, usually after I get it off, three days later the kids have put the…uh…obscenities back on it. But it’s been a week now so I confronted the students about it,” said Mackenzie. Holding back more ‘aww, isn’t that sweet’-tears, he continued. “They all got up, smiled at me and said that they wouldn’t be doing that to me anymore. These kids, I tell you…this is why I do what I do.”

It was not initially a unanimous decision. Some students expressed concern that they were losing a witty critique of their beloved teacher. That moment where they collectively realized their teacher was both aged and single had been compared by some pupils to other great epiphanies like Archimedes and his tub or when one of their classmates learnt that it was not pronounced Epip-Hey-Knees. If they stopped the spray-painting, they would be sacrificing an important part of their classroom heritage.

And it was a sacrifice which was made. This was a triumph of kindness. And also basic decency. We are all impressed.