Always Return More than you Borrowed

After last week's ice storm during which we were out of power for a day, I gave my dad a call to see how they were holding up. They live up in New Hampshire who got hit worse than we did down in Massachusetts.

He was still without power, and there was no end in sight. So I offered up my generator, which he reluctantly accepted.

Fast forward one full week. There was a big storm coming and I was getting nervous that we'd need it here again. I picked up my cell phone to call him and it rang in my hand. It was him, calling me the same time (spooky!) to say that power had just come back and that he'd be driving down to return the generator in the morning. He'd been running it for a solid 5 days.

That night it had snowed several inches, but there he was, taking no chances that his grandkids would be without power as the tail end of this storm promised heavy icy rain.

As we were lifting it out of his car and moving it back into the garage, he apologized for not filling up the tank, but he didn't want it to slosh around and leak in the back of the SUV. Are you kidding? I didn't even give it to you full.

He also apologized for not changing the oil on it for me. Again, are you kidding me? You've had no power for a week.

But he did hand me a small bottle of threadlocker, "That nut on the rubber foot keeps coming off from the vibrations," and a big lock and chain. "These things are being stolen left and right. Keep it locked up when you're running it."

There's a proverb I seem to recall that goes something like this, "Never return a neighbor's dish empty."

Thanks for the lesson, Dad.