Am I a Good Neighbor?

And that's how our day began. While passing a neighbor's house, we noticed that one side of their garage was open. Not thinking much about it, we just assumed that the other side would be occupied by their other car. But that wasn't the case. Now that's strange.

Not feeling right about just ignoring the situation I called the female neighbor on her cell phone. She was surprised to hear that the garage door was up. She was so sure she had let it down. Her place of employment is quite a distance away. You could hear the stress in her voice.

She then asked if we would be willing to go into her home if given the alarm code. Truthfully, I didn't feel comfortable with that option. Sensing some hesitation in my voice she then asked if my husband could pull the latch down in the garage that would allow for the door to be shut manually. That was a more comfortable choice for us to make. Although her garage had a keypad on the outside, she said it didn't work. In my mind they had probably changed the battery to it and surmised that wasn't the problem.

My husband, being the man that he is, wasn't convinced that the battery wasn't the problem. So what does he do? He goes to our home to get a 9 volt battery to replace the neighbor's battery. But alas I was right. Finally, he took the other suggestion and just let the garage door down with the latch. Needless to say she was relieved.

Problem solved. We've done our good deed for the day. Now we can go off to the gym can't we? Not so fast. While getting out of the car we saw a woman in the parking lot seemingly in some type of distress. She called out to us asking if we knew where the windshield wiper hose connected. My husband investigated the matter for a few moments while he was asking her questions. To me, it seemed like it had been broken from where it was supposed to attach to.

She then mentioned that a few days before she had some work done at Valvoline while getting her oil changed. She stated that they didn't put the hose back. When it became apparent that we had no solutions I suggested that she take it back to Valvoline and let them put it back in its proper place. It was at that point another man approached us to see if he could be of any assistance. After dickering a while with the said piece he suggested that she take it back to the shop. Wait a minute. Didn't I just say that?

We then went inside to do our exercise routine. When I was finishing up, I noticed that the woman was on one of the machines. I went over to her and asked had she figured it out and she replied that she hadn't. She was going to take it back after all.

In both these situations it would have been easy to just walk away and not get involved. But isn't helping out someone just the right thing to do some times? You never know when you might be in a situation where you would appreciate a helping hand.

It's a certainty that we can't always help everybody for a variety of reasons. Of course we have to keep our safety and protection utmost in our minds. And that is definitely wise. But when a reasonable opportunity presents itself, take advantage of it. You never know when you might be the one needing help.

SOURCE:

Personal experience