So many times in our daily lives we plan events or moments that do not work out exactly as anticipated. I believe that very few of those moments turn out better than expected, some are somewhat acceptable, and many end up as colossal disasters. The control person than I am, I must reluctantly admit that the lesson to be learned from such experiences is that we do not have control over all the elements of those falsely named planned events. Following is a story about one planned moment that backfired, much to the planner’s surprise. The event is true, but the names of the characters and the moments leading up to it are fictitious.
Lily loves her house and neighborhood. The streets are lined with mature oak trees and crepe myrtles; the lawns are lush green, lined with flowering plants and bushes that are neatly trimmed. It’s a small community that can be described as an oasis in the middle of a hot, hectic, crowded city. Every time Lily exits the highway and makes a right turn, she drives into this beautiful neighborhood that causes her to feel peaceful and happy; that is, until she passes Mrs. Gabbler’s house which is next door to her own home. You see, Mrs. Gabbler is a busybody.
As an elderly person who lives alone, apparently Mrs. Gabbler does not have much to do, so she spends hours sitting on her front porch watching the neighbors come and go. But it doesn’t end there; sometimes she goes to other neighbors to comment on who visited who and even makes up stories about why they visited. Two weeks ago, Lily became her target.
Lily has two young adult children who attend college and still live at home. Like all young persons, they have friends who visit often. Lily loves to have her children’s friends visit because she gets to know them and even gets to know her own children better too. But Mrs. Gabbler, who did not have much to do, imagined that some of the young visitors were probably into drugs or who knows, maybe even some black market business because the cars they drove were fairly new and seemed expensive. That was the story that was going around and which, as we all know what happens with gossip, came back to Lily (somewhat distorted) through a neighbor whose only concern was Lily’s reputation and the well-being of the children.Really!
Lily did not want to confront Mrs. Gabbler directly because she knew it would create and even bigger issue and probably involve other neighbors (the ones who repeated the stories to Lily). She decided to try an indirect approach which she carefully planned. One evening, Lily quietly went to Mrs. Gabbler’s front door and left a supermarket bag on the welcome rug; it contained a bar of soap. The next morning, Mrs. Gabbler opened the front door, picked up the bag, looked inside and quickly went back into her house. Nothing else happened, not from Lily’s side of the fence or from Mrs. Gabbler’s side of the fence.
Two days later, Mrs. Gabbler was at it again. She commented to the neighbor across the street that Lily’s son had brought home a girl that was scantily dressed and who knows what they were up to. Of course, this got back to Lily who, in keeping with her plan, that evening proceeded to tie another bag on the front door knob; this time it contained shampoo. Mrs. Gabbler was secretly watching Lily from behind closed curtains and as soon as Lily left, she opened the front door, grabbed the bag and closed the door fast.
Lily was a bit frustrated; she was not getting the response she had anticipated, that is until Friday of last week. A few minutes after Lily got home from work, Mrs. Gabbler knocked on the front door. Lily thought, “Okay; this is my chance to tell this nosy neighbor a thing or two.” She opened the door and Mrs. Gabbler immediately gushed, “Oh, Lily, I just want to thank you for being so nice to me. How did you know that I didn’t have enough money to buy soap or shampoo? That was such a lovely neighborly thing to do for me. I know I have not been minding my own business lately and even said some things I shouldn’t, but I promise that it will stop.” She hugged Lily, turned and walked away before Lily could utter a word.
Lily was stunned. What she had done to provoke a confrontation with her elderly neighbor turned out to be a peaceful resolution and Lily did not have to say a word. Little did Mrs. Gabbler know that Lily had used the soap and shampoo as bait. The plan was that when Mrs. Gabbler came to question why Lily deposited soap and shampoo by her door, Lily intended to tell her that she needed to wash out her mouth and stop spreading lies among the neighbors. That was what Lily’s mother used to do to her and her brothers whenever they used dirty language or repeated lies they had heard. However, Mrs. Gabbler never got to hear the rest of the story. She is now trying very, very hard to stop gossiping (a difficult task for her), and Lily has become her guardian angel.
Sometimes, only sometimes, things work out better than we planned.
