Not mine to give

My father liked to grow tomatoes. He planted them all over his backyard. He often put them in odd places-anywhere there was a spot of dirt. At times there were so many tomatoes that he couldn’t pick them all. Many of them would just rot on the vine. On many occasions I would see him giving handfuls to the neighbor over the fence. One day I was mowing the grass and I saw our neighbor in the backyard. I stopped mowing and picked a few of the tomatoes and gave them away. My father witnessed this while standing on the back pouch and he waited until the neighbor had gone into her house. He became angry and wanted to know why I was giving away his tomatoes. I argued that I had seen him do this many times and that they were going to waste. He said they were not mine to give. Years later I was contacted by a reporter working on a big story about the golf tournament. I had not had a leadership role in the organization for a couple of years and I told this to the reporter. He asked me if I knew anything about an ongoing contract negotiation. I told him that I did and in fact I had copies of the contract in question. He got very excited and asked if I would provide him with this information. I told him no. These secrets were not mine to give. (I didn’t trouble him with a story about tomatoes in my father’s backyard.)