2020-09 A Scout Is Helpful
Being the third month of the year, we will be focusing on the third point of the scout law which is Helpful.
When we look up the definition of helpful, we find the following: giving or ready to give help. Other words associated with helpful include: useful, cooperative, valuable, and important.
A few years ago we had a next door neighbor named Bob that was well into his eighties. Bob fought in the Korean War and was a very independent man. I could probably count on two hands the number of times Bob asked me for help on a project in the nine years that I knew him. Most of the time he was the one giving help to everyone else on the street, myself included. He always had a quick smile and the same answer for my son and myself when we would offer to help him mow his lawn (which he did up to the summer before he passed away) he would always say, “I’m ok, but thank you.”
We found a work around to this though. Winter came and it was our first big snow storm living next to Bob. The snow that had fallen was so wet and heavy that tree limbs started to break all through the neighborhood. One of which landed over Bob’s car that was parked in his driveway. We rushed over with shovels and a chain saw and we were able to get everything cleared out for Bob in an hour. He was extremely grateful. After that, each day that it snowed, we would shovel our own walkway and then just keep on going to Bob’s property and clearing his sidewalks. Some of the best, most satisfying memories are of shoveling those sidewalks and looking up to see Bob standing on his porch with a steaming hot cup of coffee in his hands smiling at us. One day, when we stepped out to start shoveling, I noticed something different… our own sidewalk along with Bob’s had been cleared off already. I looked over at Bob’s house to see him standing on his porch, next to a snow blower, smiling with his hot cup of coffee. “I bought us a new toy for $50 bucks!”, He yelled.
It was a couple of summers before Bob passed away. I walked over to see how he was doing, which usually ended up with me taking a seat on the porch and having a cold soda or Popsicle with him as we talked about how proud he was of his sons and about some of the camping and hunting activities he missed doing. He share with me that he really appreciated the help that our family gave him. He said,” I have come to the understanding that I need to let people help me. I’m a better man for allowing people to help me, and those that help me are also better when they do service.”
What started as being helpful to a neighbor resulted into a lifelong friendship between two people who lived next to each other. This month we challenge you to continue to do your good turn daily and to strive to be helpful to others around you. No matter who they are, what they look like, or what they believe. We can all help each other in one way or another to make each other a little bit better in this wold.