One of my neighbors out back of my house was cutting his lawn and his...

ClemsonTiger1988®

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Nov 17, 2024, 8:44 AM

mower threw a stone which hit my next door neighbors' car breaking a window. We pointed that out to the guy on the mower and he pitched a fit. I told him I heard the break and my oldest son was near enough to see the rock bounce off the glass.

We all got together and I believe the guilty party resolved to believe that he was going to unjustly have to pay for a window he didn't break. Son and I got involved only because the lady living next door has three teenagers who are precious to us. She has no husband and the children are of course fatherless. We just couldn't let that go. That caused the guilty neighbor to just us to be something we are not, hate filled liars.

I didn't think much of him either for I had avoided him most of the time.

Just after the storm when almost everyone in the neighborhood was cleaning up downed trees, fallen branches and refuge blown throughout the neighborhood I was out back cutting the crown of a pecan tree off the top of my carport. I'd worked two days to remove it and stack the branches for the county to pick up and noticed the guy up a ladder on the side of a big oak with a chainsaw.

Though he is a bit younger than me I hadn't been run quite as hard or put up wet nearly as often so I became concerned about someone in his physical condition with his feet 8-10' off the ground and a medium sized chainsaw in his hands. He came down and spent the rest of the afternoon whacking on the branches of that 15-18" limb which had held the butt of the limb on the side of the tree.

The next morning I walked over and began to help him cut and drag the pieces he'd cut off the huge limb to the curb for disposal. I took a good gander at where he had gotten his gas chainsaw stuck in the tree and realized that he had placed the latter in a position that the limb would have taken it from under him if he had been successful in separating the butt from the tree trunk.

Being somewhat familiar with gravity, physics and dynamic movement of potential energy, mass and such educmcated nonsense I realized I had put myself in a position of responsibility to continue until the limb was on the ground and diced enough that he wouldn't get broken in half. I continued there that afternoon and the next morning.

We were taking a break when we kinda got to know one another. I realized he was just a friend to the lady who lived in the house there and not a resident. She, the resident there, had been staying with him during the power outage. He revealed that when I asked if his power was out. He also revealed that he had a generator which wouldn't work and offered it to me if I thought I could 'fix it.'

I used his generator for 5 days after helping him get the limb off the tree, no one got a scratch during the venture and at the end when he finally came to pick up his generator at my back door he extended his hand and said 'I misjudged you two,' speaking of my son and I.

Frankly, he seemed so puffed up and full of himself I didn't think he was worth knowing. I know many if not most of the folks who read this far into a post have probably suffered through the power outage. So they can appreciate that a couple days helping a neighbor is a small fee to have power for 5 days when everyone around you is without.

BTW: I extended a long 10ga dropcord with a two gang box I attached to the end into the window of the previously mentioned fatherless children who live next door. They were able to watch TV, charge their phones and we let them our wifi during the outage.

I told the guys next door where the generator came from and they smiled with thank you's for him and he did likewise when I told him about the drop cord I'd stuck under the screen in their window.

Whether we all live happily ever after is still in question but I'm sure I made a friend and I know the old grump isn't that much of a grump.

I didn't proof read this so do your best to tolerate me.

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Not too often either way.

But, it does take time to get to know someone, so basing anything off one encounter is always risky. It's true one only gets one chance to make a first impression but there's no guarantees the first impression is accurate.

I have an inclination take things at face value which means I sometimes miss a lot, both good and bad. Mrs. Fordt is the opposite. She has a sensitivity radar far beyond me, and so many times she'll say "you do understand what is happening here, right?" I'll say 'x' and she will say, no, it's 'y'. More often than not she's right.

So something has to be a pretty powerful shot across the bow for me to even feel misjudged, when I think I have been. I was the youngest person in my office for many years, and so while I might not have had personal experience, I always had a cadre of very seasoned co-workers around me. Not unlike Danny when he took the helm at Clemson.

The big boss gave me a pretty big job once, and so I drove up alone to interview the client personally. I was in my late 20's, she was in her late 50's maybe. I thought the meeting went well. A couple of days later, she calls my immediate supervisor and says she wants someone else assigned to her job. That was a shot-across-the bow mis-judgement that got even my attention...getting removed from a job before it even began.

So, I went to the big boss and said "What is this? You gave me the job, you know I can do the job, you trust me with the job, and I don't know what is up with Mrs. X. We had a perfectly fine meeting."

He said, "All true. Mrs. X is a scared cat. She just got her job, and if anything goes wrong, it will fall on her lap. So she's not thinking about you, she's thinking about her. She wants someone to hold her hand, and she'd rather them have gray hair, wrinkles, and spectacles while they do it. I didn't give you the job because I didn't think you couldn't do it. You have my complete confidence."

As it turned out the job fell through on their side and so it never happened anyway. But I remember that episode vividly all these years later.

On the flip side it's hard to say. Usually because you never even get a chance to realize you've misjudged someone. If I've known them long enough I probably know them well enough not to misjudge them. If I don't know them well, I'll probably never know I misjudged them.

For me that might be a considerable number of times. Who knows how many times a girl has asked me if I want to come over to her place for coffee, and when I show up with two Starbucks and no condoms she immediately changed her mind about me. Always taking things at face-value isn't always good.

Do you ever feel misjudged

One of my neighbors out back of my house was cutting his lawn and his...

Re: One of my neighbors out back of my house was cutting his lawn and his...

Re: One of my neighbors out back of my house was cutting his lawn and his...

What God knew was that there was divisions among His children and He...

Re: Do you ever feel misjudged

This quip made your post best of the day.

Re: Do you ever feel misjudged

Re: Do you ever feel misjudged

Re: Do you ever feel misjudged

Romans 8:28 is immutable.***

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