An Act of Kindness...No Matter How Small...Often Gets Screwed Up!

You know, even as a child I could never do anything sneaky...the reason...I'm just not good at being sneaky.  This week just proves that theory.  The other day, I read something sad on our friend's Facebook page.  She posted a story about how some evil little vandals came into her yard and broke some things, including her prized gazing ball decoration.  I was so sad to read this, because she is such a nice person, and she is always doing kind and generous things for other people.  Well, Ken and I came up with another one of our "good" ideas.  We decided we would surprise her by buying her a brand new gazing ball and anonymously place it in her yard.  Well...that was the plan anyway.
 
So Ken and I went to Walmart and purchased a shiny new gazing ball and stand.  After we left the store, we slowly drove into her neighborhood and parked the van a couple houses away so that we could take time to unwrap it and set it up.  After that step was completed, Ken drove slowly up to her house.  He then quietly tip toed out of the car and into her yard and gently placed the gazing ball next to her front porch.  Giggling all the way back to the car, he hopped back in, and we zoomed away.

Finally, after all these years I've finally pulled off a sneaky act without a hitch...or so I thought.  After we got home, Ken and I sat down to eat lunch, still giggling at how much fun we had.

 While munching a mouthful of food, I said to Ken...."Are you sure we put the gazing ball in the right yard?"

"Oh, I'm 99% sure." he said.  

"What do you mean, 99% sure? " I replied with great concern. 

"Well, I've never been to her house before, but I heard it's blue, and that is the only blue house on the corner. " he said as his smile started to disappear.

To make a long story short, later that day we discovered that her house was not blue.  It was light tan.  It didn't take these two detectives long to figure out we had placed the gazing ball in the wrong yard.  Now....what to do....

Our first thought was...well, we'll just go take the gazing ball out of the neighbor's yard and place it in our friend's yard.  But then we thought...oh no...wouldn't that be stealing?  Then we thought...it "technically" wouldn't be stealing...it was "technically" ours until our friend "technically" took possession of it...But then, what if the person in the blue house didn't see it that way and they "technically" thought it was theirs and thought we were "technically" stealing it...and how would we ever explain all these "technicalities" to the police???? Bad bad idea.  How...how...how do we get ourselves into these situations?  We were only trying to be kind. Ken decided the best solution would be to just go to the store and buy another gazing ball and stand...Oh, and since HE was the one who put it in the wrong yard in the first place, he was willing to pay for it out of his monthly fun money allowance...so that even sweetened the deal! 

But, a strange set of circumstances then occurred.  The neighbor in the blue house saw the gazing ball in their yard, thought it was the stolen one that belonged to our friend, and returned it to her! Oh joy!

The moral of this story....If you're going to do something kind...and you are going to be sneaky....just don't get me involved!