Raking it in
Honesty is the best policy. Right? Well, there comes a time when honesty is not the best policy. At least that is what my friend Ronald says.
It was a cool autumn day, and the leaves filled the ground with color. Yes, the trees were full of color too, but in our case, there were more leaves on the ground. I should say now there were more leaves on the ground.
Ronald had said the day before, “Why don’t we go door to door and see if we can make some money raking leaves for people?”
I pointed out to him that there were few leaves on the ground. I asked him who would want us to rake leaves if there weren’t any to rake.
Ronald had a plan, for near us was a town dump. You see, each year, the town gathered whatever leaves had fallen on the street and brought them to this dump and left them there to deal with later. They continued this throughout Fall. Ronald’s plan was to go to the dump, gather as many leaves as we could in bags, and then overnight visit some houses in the neighborhood (to people who didn’t know us) and empty our bags of leaves on their property. Those houses were the ones we should go to and offer our services the next day. What could possibly go wrong?
The first part of his plan went off without a hitch. Actually, he wouldn’t have known that since he had me gather up all of the leaves since I lived closer to the dump.
Next came the part about choosing the houses. Again Ronald suggested that we should dump the leaves closer to my house, that way, people would believe that the wind blew all the leaves from the dump to their lawn.
Ronald wasn’t available to go house to house with me the next day. He called me up and said he was sick and would be out for a few days, but I should go ahead anyway.
Of course, his plan didn’t work out. The chances of me not being seen at night were slim, and of course, someone did see what I was doing.
Needless to say, I was confronted and caught the next day when I tried to offer my services. I couldn’t deny what I had done.
My mother was none too pleased when she found out what I did. I had to go back to all of the houses, even ones I hadn’t touched, and do their raking for free until all the leaves had stopped falling.
Somehow my mom knew that Ronald was to be involved, but since he hadn’t been with me, she couldn’t prove it. Mothers know those kinds of things.
Surprisingly, Ronald seemed very healthy the next day, and he didn’t even bother to help me rake – honestly.
