“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! – Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
Mike and his sidekick Kent were two high school boys I used to hire occasionally to do odd jobs on the ranch we once owned. Mike, a big bruiser of a guy, was definitely the alpha of the pair and always the spokesman. I loved his attitude because every time I asked them to do something he would always answer, “Yeah, we can to that.” I never heard him express any doubt about any task I ever asked them to do. In his mind, I do believe, they could do anything. Of course, most of the chores I had for them were of the manual labor variety and those guys, especially Mike, were plenty strong.
One great story I heard about Mike and Kent occurred when they were young teenagers, a couple of years before I began engaging them to work for me. They had been offered a job hauling an old upright piano from someone’s home. In payment for their service they got to keep the piano and do with it whatever they pleased. The boys, of course, saw dollar signs figuring they could polish it up a bit and sell it for a tidy sum. So they loaded the piano on a flatbed trailer hitched behind a pickup truck they had borrowed from one of their dads and off they went with Mike at the wheel. All went well until Mike rounded a curve a little too fast slinging the piano off the trailer into the middle of the highway where it smashed into a million pieces. Poor Kent just stood there in the road starring at this disastrous mess shaking his head. Then Mike came over and put his arm around his distraught friend. “Don’t worry, buddy,” he said cheerfully, “we can fix it!” Of course, they had about as much chance putting Humpty-Dumpty back together as that old smashed up piano.
Now Mike may have been a little over confident at times, sometimes biting off more than he could chew, but I have to say this about those two guys; they always worked together as a team. They knew that two are better than one; for if one falls down, his friend is there to help him up. . . . “But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!”