Bad neighbors

A few weeks ago, I'm driving home from helping someone (only mentioned because that should have earned me some good karma... right?) and the thunder and lightening was warning us of a storm coming. I turn into my subdivision and the rain and serious wind start. I turn right, onto my street, and see my beautiful new tent used for my craft shows hung on my neighbor's gutter blowing crazily in the wind. OH MY GOODNESS. I park, leave the kids in the car, and try and rescue, not really the tent, but my neighbor's gutter. (We'd had the tent set up for Trevan's birthday party and John hadn't taken it down yet, and our backyard is basically a horrible wind tunnel...)

The heavy wind and rain literally take my breath away. I tried to hold down the tent just to keep it from ripping the gutter off offering silent prayers to make the wind stop. In that short amount of time I am already completely soaked.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a neighbor leave their house and shut their garage. "He saw me, and is going to come help," I thought to myself. Still standing there holding onto my stupid tent... Again, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the same neighbor driving his van, "Oh he just wanted to drive here instead of getting all wet," I thought, feeling a tad relieved.

He drove right past me.

Yes, he did.

Eventually, I was able to get the tent unhooked from the gutter and saw there was some damage, but the wind was still too heavy to leave the tent to blow into someone else's house, and the tent was too heavy and mangled to move by myself.

So, I am standing there soaked literally to the bone, in heavy rain, wind, lightening holding down a $200 piece of junk, feeling pretty helpless. I was so mad.

What made me even more mad is that two more neighbors drove past right past me!

What???

If I saw anyone standing outside in those conditions OBVIOUSLY in distress I would totally stop. ESPECIALLY if it was a neighbor.

Eventually the wind died down enough, and I had the tent down enough I thought it wouldn't blow away and I went and knocked on my GOOD neighbor's door to help me shove the tent in the garage somehow.

He and his daughter helped me, thank goodness. John got home from work right as the storm ended and right after we got the tent in the garage.

So, that night for Family Home Evening I taught Trevan about helping others.

"Do you remember this afternoon when Mommy was standing out in the rain holding down that tent? Well, some cars drove by and the people in those cars didn't even offer to help. Was that very nice of them?"

Anyway, we taught him about helping people which also turned into teaching him about stranger danger.

"If someone asks you to help them look for their dog, or wants to give you candy or a toy, even if they say they asked your mommy and she said it was alright, what do you do? Come ask me first, and I can help you look for the dog too! You always have to ask me or daddy first before you do anything or go anywhere with anybody."

That was pretty funny.

This however, was not funny:

You see where it says, "EZUP"? It should also say EZ DOWN. Ugh!

I was able to salvage the top awning and two of the side doors. That's it. So when my other one's side doors break (I had to buy another one), I'll have a $200 replacement for it! That was just the start of a really bad week that week.

I had to add in Family Home Evening that maybe the neighbors couldn't stop to help because one of them had just had surgery, or the other had to go poo so bad if he had stopped he would have pooped his pants. I did try and give them the benefit of the doubt...