Good intentions?

I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by people with good intentions. In fact, I’ve probably got the least good intentions in my circle of friends. Hmm…I like that phrase. Both meanings are meant – 1) that I probably have fewer good intentions than others in the circle but that I do have good intentions and 2) that my good intentions are probably not as “good” as the good intentions of others but they are not bad or evil intentions.? Of course, there is a bit of false modesty here as well, which goes and proves that whole “least good intentions” thing is probably accurate afterall. Strange..

Anyway, it is sort of like the idea around buying the worst house on the street – letting the neighbors increase your value. It makes good sense – though sometimes you need to put up with the occasional awkward moment.? Surrounding myself with people that have more good intentions than myself is a way of making my life better – both in that I have fewer people with bad intentions to worry about and that I probably end up raising the bar for my own intentions just out of association. Win win.

But lately, I’ve started to wonder, how many well intentioned actions go wrong? Luckily for me, I’ve been able to examine some really well intentioned people in my own home lately and can give some examples of how things can go wrong:

• Good intention – not wanting to disturb the general environment with cigarette ashes and collecting the ashes.
• Gone wrong: stinking up the house by disposing of those ashes in the house instead of in the trash outside.
• Good intention – wanting to clear up the ivy around the fence in the front yard.
• Gone wrong: pulling the fence down with the ivy.
• Good intention – wanting to organize the recycling bins.
• Gone wrong: the bins (which aren’t used any more in our neighborhood) are no longer blocking the gap in the fence and Chapo gets to go exploring through the neighborhood unattended. Don’t they know people want to dog-nap Chapo and he needs as much protection as possible?
• Good intention – wanting to organize some components with flashing lights.
• Gone wrong: apparently our cable modem and wireless router interfere a bit with each other and without some bit of distance between them, the throughput on our wireless router plummets to a speed that even the Flinstones would be offended by.
• Good intention – answering our phone, since our answering machine died and we don’t want to hassle with a new, state of the art, answering machine-less answering machine setup.
• Gone wrong: we’re signed up for N credit-insurance programs and our long distance company has changed.

Okay, okay – not all of those things happened. But they could have. Which makes me feel better about not having as many good intentions as some of the people I hang out with. I mean, if I did, more things could actually go wrong, right? And what’s more frustrating that not being able to be frustrated at something, because the person that did it had good intentions? Very few things. Yeah – I’m not gonna be the one propagating that kind of mojo…

Anyone want to volunteer some other well intended actions that have gone wrong?