Thursday, July 01, 2010

Too Much Help?

A couple days ago when Jeffrey and I were walking, we noticed that the yard across the street really needed mowed.  Since their house was quite damaged in the storm, those neighbors won't be living there for a while.  We thought it might be nice if we volunteered our teenage son to mow the yard for them, giving them one less thing to worry about.

I mentioned it to Cory, but he didn't really feel comfortable just going over there and mowing their yard, though he was more than willing to do it if we talked to them first.  Then yesterday, the neighbor who lives right next door was mowing his own yard, and when he finished his, he kept right on going and mowed his neighbors' yard, too.  So Cory didn't get a chance.

Then today, someone else showed up to mow the yard, someone they had hired to do it.  I guess Cory was right about talking to the neighbors first...  The hired guys stood around for a bit, like they were wondering what they were supposed to do now, and then one of them went ahead and mowed - even though it had just been done yesterday and didn't need done again.  I don't know if mowing is the way he gets his ab workouts or if he didn't want to miss out on getting paid for mowing.

The good thing is that, ever since the tornado went through, people have really been coming out and helping their neighbors and helping the community.  At one point in time, the Red Cross said they had more volunteers signed up to help than they thought were needed.  You don't want to see a disaster like this happen to anyone, but it's encouraging to see people pull together and help each other.