It Never Hurts to Help

I really feel like Eek![1] the cat sometimes, you know?

I have a horrible recurrance of the following chain of events: I see a friend who could really use some help, I find a way to help, I fall all over myself trying to help, and inevitably, get in my own way and then things are worse for both my friend and I than they were before.

It just really sucks, let me tell you, and I know I try too hard. This is why it happens, of course, but how do I try *less*? Won't I just fail then too but for not trying hard enough?

Luckily, this never happens to me at work -- only in my personal life where I have some emotional investment.

[1]Eek! is this fat purple cat whose catchphrase is "it never hurts to help". The episodes all start with him seeing someone in trouble, uttering the fateful phrase, and subsequently get beaten to a pulp, blown up, anviled, etc for the duration of the cartoon. It kicks ass. And his girlfriend is not to be believed; the writers conceived of Annabelle as being unimaginably fat (yes, that means she'd be bigger than James and Percy if she were real. :) ) and pink. And then there's the Squishy Bears (Cozy, Puffy, Wuzz-Wuzz and Pierre) and the Whining Pirates, and and...damn, I wish this were still on the air. Oh, and Eek! is owned by the ugliest children on earth, and the creator of Eek!, Savage Steve Holland, also directed Better Off Dead, which everyone I know seems to have seen. (two dollars...)

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