lending a hand
You don’t need a sociology degree from the Stanwoodopolis University to know that these modern times we live in make us more isolated from each other. Oh sure, you got 1500 ‘friends’ on Facebook and you all watch the same TV shows and ‘like’ the same shampoo, but if you need help hauling an appliance from the Goodwill to the back porch, good luck with any of those ‘friends’ driving the truck you need.
Even a gnarly curmudgeon like myself believes Social Networking is okay so far as it goes, but down here on the pioneer South End, we got a slightly more Hands-On social network. Last week I got a call that a friend whose sibling was being held by the state for remedial psychiatric assistance, needed help clearing house and property. A bunch of us dropped what we were doing and headed up the holler with chainsaws, packing boxes, garbage sacks and pickup trucks. We’re still at it, but we’ll get her done.
Another friend needs a little construction done, one needed a lift to the doctor’s office for an eye operation, another wants her cats cared for while she’s on vacation, someone needs help dropping a tree and just this morning I got a call to deliver a prescription to the drug store — the list goes on.
You live on the frontier, you need each other. Learning how to ask for help might just be harder than learning how to give it, but it’s worth learning if you want to live down here in the remote nettle regions of the Great Mossback backwash. Nobody said it would be easy, but it doesn’t have to be too hard either…. All I can say is folks who bellyache about the damn government interfering with their right to ignore their neighbors’ plights better hope their safety net isn’t 1500 yahoos on Facebook.
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