We had been warned that a particular individual was not very, shall we say, socially adept. It was still a bit disturbing.
You are aware that a dear friend was in an accident a couple weeks back. He does not drive; he was being driven home from work at the time. The vehicle was totalled and the driver has no way of replacing it, and our friend has no way of getting to and from work without it. Thus we have lent him one of our vehicles so that he can have someone drive him to work.
Yes, it is inconvenient, but as I told him fifteen years ago, friendship only matters when it is inconvenient. The Lord has provided some alternate assistance in this regard, as we have been using the disused car of one of our houseguests, and the son who has his own car is home for a couple weeks before going to his summer job. The only real inconvenience is that we are lending the truck, for various reasons, and we need it once a week to take trash to the dump. We missed doing this on Saturday simply because we were too late, but we arranged to pick it up late last night to return it this afternoon. They were not going to need it until five, and as it turns out he was too sick to go to work today anyway so they did not need it then.
Note, for context, that we are lending them this truck, and that we need in one day each week, but that we do not inconvenience them by asking them to drive it to us for us to use on that one day. No, instead of insisting that they make one round trip to let us use our own truck for an hour or so each week, we make one round trip to pick it up and another to return it, paying two bridge tolls in the process where they would only have had to pay one. (For anyone not aware of it, it is a joke in New Jersey that all the bridges have one way tolls–it is free to enter the state, but you have to pay to leave. This covers all the New York bridges, the Delaware bridge, and the Philadelphia area bridges; there are a few northern Delaware River bridges that are free in both directions, and you can of course cross the northern border into New York State at no charge.)
I accept all this. I pretty much agreed to it. So what has me annoyed? Well, after we got home from borrowing our truck, the girl who drives it for him gave us a call to say that we borrowed the truck and she hoped we remembered to put gas in it.
In point of fact, we did put gas in it–about fifty dollars worth of gas in a tank which was three quarters empty. We might have used ten dollars worth of it ourselves, maybe a bit more–but that was before we filled it. I don’t begrudge them the gas. I begrudge them the attitude.
I’m told she is the perhaps a bit spoiled but now cut off daughter of rather wealthy parents, so perhaps she does not understand common courtesy and gratitude. There also may be some bad feeling, as she, let us say, does not really like all of his friends. I will let it pass, and try to have it not influence future decisions and attitudes.
Of course, I’m sure they are not reading this blog, and I trust that none of you are going to repeat this to anyone who might know them. After all, everyone knows that if you have secrets you want to keep secret, the best thing to do is blog them on the Internet. I should probably delete all of this–but then I would have to think of something else to write, and I’m late and it’s tired, so I’m going with what I have. I’ll deal with the repercussions later.
–M. J. Young
