Andrew Kirby will never eat alone at school.

From Now On, This Teen Will Never Eat Alone 

For some students, the first day of school can be scary or sometimes lonely. Everybody wants to fit in and have new friends. But all it takes is one gesture of goodwill and kindness to turn that around for someone.

Andrew Kirby of Boiling Springs, South Carolina used to eat lunch alone every day. But not this year. 

 Lunch at Andrew’s school

This school year has a good start for Andrew when a whole group of people started to sit and eat lunch with him. His mother, Kay Kirby, was overjoyed to learn that the student council at his high school asked him to join their lunch table.

Kay Kirby and her husband Tyler Kirby adopted Andrew after fostering him as a baby. Andrew has experienced a lot of battles since he was young. He was born with a drug addiction and neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition that causes tumors to form in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves.

Kirby family

Andrew has always been a shy kid and would often sit his by himself at lunch during middle school.

As a mom, Kay is worried. She would often text Andrew during the school day to ask if he was eating lunch with anyone. “When he’d say, ‘No,’ I would have to turn my head a lot of time [and try] not to cry,” Kirby said. “He would say, ‘Mom, it’s ok. I get on my phone, so I don’t notice.'”

But all that changed this year. Andrew got into his mother’s car with a big smile on his face after the first day of his junior year.

Boiling Springs High School

He finally made friends! The members of the student council saw that he and some other kids were eating lunch alone so they invited everyone to sit together.

Kay was so overjoyed by the act of kindness that she posted about it on Facebook and was shared more than 5,000 times.

Even U.S. Sen. Tim Scott commended the Boiling Springs High School Student Council for their kindness.

Boiling Springs High School students

That simple act of kindness gives out big impact to those people who were given love, respect, and attention. Kudos to the student council members who made Andrew and other cast out students be acknowledged.

“Goodness is about character - integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.”

- Dennis Prager