Be-Leaf in your neighbors
Last Thursday, I drove home to pick up my daughter from the school around the corner from us. As I entered the neighborhood, I saw the city leaf-collection crew coming down the street. Since I was planning to take the following day off to blow leaves, I had a few choice words for my ill-adjusted timing.
But as I drove down the street and passed our house, I slammed on the brakes. There, in front of my house was a huge mound of leaves at the curb. The entire front yard had been picked clean and shunted to the street.
I continued on to the school (since I was late, anyway) but began a mental inventory of what possibly could have happened. Had my wife paid someone to do the work as a surprise? No. Had someone owed me a favor and repaid me? No. Would a neighbor have done that for no good reason? Surely not.
When I got home, I went across the street to talk to a neighbor who had been home that day. "I think I saw Jay out there with his backpack blower, yeh," said she, fingering my neighbor to the left.
I spotted Jay in his backyard and asked what he knew about the leaves that, now, were getting sucked up by the leaf crew. His growing smile belied his denial. Truth be told, he said, yeah, he did it.
Turns out his old backpack blower blew up, so he went that day and bought himself a new one. He did his backyard so fast, he wasn't satisfied with having seen enough. "I looked at your yard and wondered how it would do with all those little oak leaves."
40 minutes later, he said, the leaves were at the curb.
Was he repaying me for 10 years of listening to his Led Zepplin basement tribute band and not calling the cops? For all the times his pneumatic tools punctured a quiet Saturday? Or was he just being a guy playing with a new toy and helping out his time-starved neighbor along the way?
I'm not sure that I have been, but I hope in the future to be that kind of neighbor too.