Life, one anecdote involving a small group of bored high school kids

One spring weekend, a small group of three or four teenage boys hatched some plan to drive to a neighboring town, meet up with an acquaintance which purportedly had free tickets to a movie. As so typical of half-baked teenage plans, once the boys arrived, the acquaintance was not home and their plans to watch a movie fell through.

While they sat on the front porch in this older neighborhood of modest homes, trying to decide what to do next, one of them looked across the street to see a man, late in years, push his gas lawn mower out of the garage and begin to pull the starter rope. The boy, being more impulsive than the rest, jumped up, ran across the street, and convinced the man to let him give it a try. Pretty soon, the lawn mower was purring nicely so the kid insisted on starting out across the lawn with it.

The corner lot contained about a quarter acre of tall green grass that hadn’t been cut since the previous fall. It was slow going. About then, the rest of the boys caught on to the idea. They ran over, found some rakes and grass trimmers in the garage and began to help out as well.

In one of those spontaneous combustions of group participation, neighbors came from out of their homes and brought their own lawn mowers and yard tools. At one point, there was probably 3 or 4 lawn mowers of various sizes and capabilities plying their way across this man’s yard. Piles of grass were being raked up and carried away. In a couple of hours, the lawn was completely mowed, the edges trimmed, and the sidewalk swept. The man and his wife brought out a couple of six packs of soft drinks and thanked everyone profusely.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, people disappeared back to their day, the small group of teenage boys hopped back into their car and drove home.

This is not a particularly remarkable event. It probably happens in small towns fairly regularly.
It is that effervescent activity called life.

Our gift is humanity,
Our mission is civilization.
To what end? (TBC)