The key to good deeds

I’m not sure about you, but I know whenever I do a good deed for someone it makes me feel good and it makes me feel happy.

On the weekend I stopped to pick up some litter off of the floor in the stands at the Mariners Centre. As I did, I saw there was a wallet on the floor under a seat.

I checked the wallet for identification and immediately recognized who it belonged to, although I was told they had left the rink.

I made a phone call to track down that person’s telephone number and then I gave them a quick call.

Within about eight minutes the wallet was back in the person’s rightful hands.

I felt good and happy.

Still, sometimes I do good deeds for those who can’t appreciate them.

Bugs, for instance.

If there is a fly buzzing around the inside of our house, I will open doors and windows and try to coax the thing outside. Sometimes it takes a few seconds.

Sometimes it takes 15 or 20 minutes.

Sometimes longer.

Which often leads me to wonder which of us is the less smart part of this equation? The bug who can’t find its way out of an open window, or the woman talking to the bug for 20 minutes explaining to it that the window is open and freedom is literally a foot away?

And in the process of leaving the door or window open, two or three more flies fly into the house.

It reminds me of that saying, “no good deed goes unpunished.”

I can recall a prime example of that from many years ago.

I was at the rink for my son’s hockey practice. A friend who had to stay at the rink longer because she had to attend a minor hockey board meeting asked me if I could drive her son home. Sure, no problem.

After I left the rink, my son’s coach called. He mentioned he had found a set of keys that belonged to one the dads on our team. We figured they were left at the rink by accident when that family left.

I didn’t have the family’s cellphone numbers and since their house was only a little bit out of my way on my way home, I offered to deliver the keys to their house.

I swung by the rink, picked up the dad’s keys, and drove out of town headed for his house.

As I eventually pulled onto their road, and then into their driveway, a thought occurred to me. If my friend was at the rink because she was attending a board meeting, it stood to reason that this dad’s keys were still at the rink was because so was he! After all, he was a member of the board too.

So now in doing my good deed, I was parked in the driveway of their locked, empty house with the keys that he would need to eventually drive home.

So really, I hadn’t brought this man’s keys home to him. You could actually say I had stolen them from the rink.

Oh boy. So much for my good deed of the night.

I drove back to town and to the Mariners Centre to return the keys to the dad. If you’re keeping track of my mileage, this was a lot of driving over the course of an hour.

As it turned out I could have saved myself that second trip. The keys I had in my possession were a spare set and he could have gotten home regardless.

Oh well, at least it was a good deed and it made me feel good and it made me feel happy. Or not.

At least when I’m spending a half-hour trying to get a housefly to fly out of my house, I don’t have to leave the comfort of my own home.