It Doesn’t Take Much to Get Into Trouble

One summer day last year I was in the middle of my morning routine when the doorbell rang. I absolutely despise somebody ringing my doorbell or pounding on the door especially at 8:00 AM.

So, in typical fashion I ignored it. There isn’t anything that anybody who has been banging on my door has to say that interests me. I don’t care if you are selling gold bricks for a dollar you can go pound salt.

In the meantime, I checked outside and noticed that the bell ringer happened to be the young woman who lived next door to me and she was going from house to house as if she needed help. So alright, in this day and age of stalkers and serial killers, I decided that I might as well put my shoes on to go outside and find out what in the hell was going on.

It turned out that all this fuss was about the fact that she had just started a new job and her car wouldn’t start. She was afraid she was going to be late. By this time a man who was parked in the street, some goon who wouldn’t even say hi to me, offered his car battery to her but didn’t have jumper cables. Already regretting my decision to come outside but yet still trying to be helpful, I offered them the use of a set of cables that I had in my garage.

We got her car started and the goofy Good Samaritan, whoever he was, disappeared into the ether as quickly as he appeared. She seemed relieved that I had stayed with her until the stranger left and she could be safely on her way.

I presumed that was my good deed for the day and that was that.

A day or so passed and I was sitting in my living room when my wife got home early one evening. Without so much as a hello my wife blew into the room and asked me, “What is with this cake that was on the front porch?”

Sure enough she was standing in the doorway holding a cake. I very politely replied, “I don’t know anything about no damn cake.”

To which my wife sharply responded, “And there’s a note on it that says, ‘Thanks for jumping me.’ What the hell?”

It is at this point that no matter what you say you are going to sound guilty of something. Frustrated I gave it my best shot, “Oh for crying out loud that must be from the woman next door who was pounding on the door yesterday morning because she couldn’t get her car started and there was this weird guy in the street who offered to help her but…”

My wife interrupted, “For God’s sake Bill, why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday?”

To which I very logically replied, “Because it never would have occurred to me again from now until the end of the world had it not been for that f**king cake!”

It doesn’t take much to get into trouble. The scripture says, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

It may not be the scripture that you are familiar with but it is the one that I live by.