It’s one thing to help a pal out at a moment’s notice, and another to fling aside any semblance of having your own life at the drop of a hat. I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon, ever since Dylan told me over lunch about this whole car thing with Darren.
In short, Darren has been calling up Dylan on a weekly basis, always at utterly inconvenient times, to request help in an increasingly unbelievable series of pickles he claims to have gotten muddled up in. These all seem to concern Darren’s truck getting damaged in various outlandish ways, which all sound far from accidental if you ask me.
I reckon Darren is just seeing how far he can push Dylan’s famously endless generosity when it comes to helping out mates. It’s commendable, that trait, but I can’t help but see it as a little extreme. What does he think is going to happen if he just says no for once? Worst case scenario: someone’s going to have to sort out their own last-minute tax appointment, get their own date to the company dinner, or find someone else to drag their truck out of a ditch they shouldn’t have driven into in the first place.
Then again, I’m just as guilty as the next person of taking advantage of Dylan’s goodwill. There was that time a few months back when one of my headlights blew out and I couldn’t find an auto electrician near Bentleigh, so I convinced Dylan to drive around town with me holding an industrial flashlight out the window. He obliged for several days in a row, selflessly helping me do my evening errands, before I was able to get an appointment at an auto shop.
It’s true that I didn’t need him to do that, exactly – it was just kind of funny watching him do it. So, in a way, I am uniquely positioned to see what Darren is up to. It seems kind of mean when it’s someone else and not me doing it. Maybe we should all chip in to do a favour for Dylan, like pay for his next car service. Around Bentleigh alone, there’s got to be at least a few of us who’ve conned the poor guy into doing our bidding unnecessarily. It’s really the least we could do.