We held out as long as we could but today we turned the house A/C on. It ran for a couple of hours before I realized that it wasn't cooling the house.

Ten minutes before: A friend called and asked if I would spray clear lacquer on a table he had distressed. Always happy to help those in need, I offered to do it no charge since I was just given ten gallons of satin lacquer for free from another friend.

Turns out my table friend is a master HVAC guy. As he's driving up my driveway I text him a question about what to check. He hops out, goes to my A/C compressor and begins checking. All is well there except it is not running. He presses the contacts and voila! on it comes. So he inspects my furnace unit and finds two wires I neglected to attach when I did my annual service and coil cleaning. Dummy.

We unload his table and I tell him when it will be done. We didn't have to wait for a tech to come nor pay a massive bill for parts we don't need. He even offered that if my unit had died, he would get me one at shop cost and install it no charge.

Everyone is served, we are even better friends, Mrs DF remains pleasantly cool tonight, my friend gets his table done perfectly and at no charge and no govt entity was empowered nor enriched.

To voluntarily serve and be served is the nature of the true principle of charity.

I don't call that charity as either of you could have paid for what you needed to get done. But you both did the neighborly thing and that's good.

Well, you can't beat that for service. But it's more of a good trade rather than charity.

I think it's closer to the true nature of charity in that one person working to have a charitable heart, willing to give to another without compensation other than to do a good deed, is in turn later given service for his efforts. This time it was instant karma. Anyway, whatever it was, all parties are edified and govt is deprived of what it craves.