Self:  Ok, I’ll get you some sugar, but you can’t have any eggs.

...right?

If I’m going to bother sending the sugar I will send an egg. The question is whether to send the sugar and the egg, at all. 

If you’re thinking about my neighbour across the common that I told you about ages ago, well, so am I. 

If you send her sugar and eggs, it gets HER in trouble, in terms of Karma, for asking.  But if you don’t send anything, then YOU get in trouble.  So maybe you’re right.  Only I’m thinking just maybe send an egg.

Yeah, middle road.  Your title.  So that’s what I was thinking too.  One or the t’other.

My tendancy is to give sugar AND egg and let them REALIZE.  However that is not how it works.  They just go, “COOL!  Free sugar and egg!”

No no no no. 

That’s not what I wanted to convey.

So, hypothetical neighbour gets no sugar and one (1) egg.  Now she will hate me. 

Sigh…

(She wasn’t entirely hypothetical in the first place, and has probably forgotten entirely about me.  Argh.)

I got an idea.  Perhaps if you have some nuts, and they embolden you to go once or twice a week, (go over with some people like me, I mean) and ask to borrow some… eggs, or sugar, or baker’s chocolate, or some butter, or whatever… or even without any nuts (but that might be a little more difficult), you could find a way to “Do unto others as they have done unto you.” and learn from them whatever they might think is an appropriate response to having been done to as you have been.

I suppose that, depending on the size and demeanor of the nuts you bring with you, this could be borderline extortion.  However, having watched the Sopranos, I know that many Italians in history have learned not to borrow what they cannot afford to pay back.  And such… emotionally charged… schemes were instrumental in the instruction.

The trouble with the whole thing is that it’s so time-consuming.  As I said, I’m sure that neighbour doesn’t even remember me anymore, but I remember HER.  And I don’t even live in the same town anymore.  Even if I did, all that slogging around borrowing things would be inefficient.  She gets an (hypothetical) egg.  That’s it.  If she sends the hypothetical kid back for sugar, I’ll send him back with something really confusing, like a rubber chicken.