Last night, I talked with a friend of mine that I haven’t seen in a while. After the usual quick catch-up questions and answers, he chuckled and said, “Well, Doc, your ole buddy is getting old.” Knowing there was a story behind this comment, I smiled and said, “Go on.” So, he went on.

“My church announced a little community project a while back. Now, I don’t usually get involved in those; I’ve got so much other stuff going on.” He paused, looked off to the side for a few seconds, then resumed. “But this time, I thought maybe I’d just surprise everybody and show up.”

“Anyone collapse from shock?” I asked, smirking a bit.

“Well, that’s the thing,” he commented, “I was the only one who showed up. I don’t know if I had the wrong date, the wrong time or the wrong place, or what it was but whatever it was I was the only one there.”

Knowing Roy, I knew that any of the above were certainly possibilities. “Maybe,” I suggested wryly, “they called it off and knew there wasn’t any need to let you know.”

He laughed, “You could be right,” shook his head and admitted, “They sure wouldn’t think there was any need to call me. But, again, given the way my forgetter works, it could be that, too. Maybe I just had the wrong night.”

“So, what’d you do? Go on back home and watch TV?”

“No,” he shrugged, “I just went ahead and worked anyway.”

Turned out, he worked for an hour-and-a-half, raking and bagging leaves, picking up trash and scraping up the winter’s matted debris from along the curb. “What’d you do with all of that?” I asked and he answered, “Bagged it all up, threw it in the back of the truck and hauled it off to my dumpster.”

“Anybody else every show up to help?”

“Nope. I just went ahead and worked by myself. Knew I wouldn’t get it all done but figured whatever I did get done would be that much done.”

We talked a while longer and then said our goodbyes but I couldn’t quit thinking about Roy and how out of character it seemed. And I thought, too, how good it would be if all of us just went ahead and did something good for our community, even if no one else showed up and no one else saw what we were doing.

H. Arnett
5/7/10