Monday, April 4, 2011

Kindly Deeds, Done for Free

The other day, I woke up to a very nice surprise: My old car, which I had feared was on its last legs, had not only been fixed but was up and running in the driveway.

The Aluminum Falcon had gone kaput! on me in the latter part of July, flat-out refusing to start one morning. A couple of good friends of mine came over to look at it and to assess the damage. One of them cleaned the corrosion off of the battery and tried to jump-start it, with little success, and the other determined that I had some sort of electrical issue going on and that I could very well be facing hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of repairs.

Mainly due to the thought of having to fork out all of that money to get things fixed, I let my Escort sit silently in the garage, collecting dust and cobwebs, while I drove my "loaner" car (the aforementioned Stratus, which also broke down on me in Lehi) over the past several months, all the while trying to save up and to find some way to get it back on the road.


Then, not long ago, my brother Steve, seeing my plight, made a bartering agreement with a friend of his: As "payment" for Steve filing his taxes, his friend, a mechanic by trade, in turn, agreed to come and have a look at my car and to see what he could do to help.

I had scarcely learned that Steve and his friend had come over when they informed me that they had found the problem (a coil in the engine, as well as the battery, needed replacing) and fixed it, and they had also replaced a tire that had become flat and unusable in the intervening months. This project, I learned, required more than a few minutes' labor - closer to a couple of hours, actually - for them to accomplish all of this.

It was, indeed, a nice surprise that awaited me in the driveway. And as much as I thanked him for his efforts, Steve's friend refused to receive payment for something that, indeed, could have been very costly to yours truly.

So, today, I'm just full of gratitude for a simple act of kindness that has, to me, meant a great deal. I'm glad that there are people out there who will offer service out of the goodness of their hearts - and that includes my two friends who had, earlier on, made an effort to help. And it inspires me to "pay it forward," if I can, in the future.

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