Check for Loaded Guns

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People offer you things all the time, and usually they are good for you. Sometimes, what looks like a good idea is really a loaded gun. Owing to my experiences, I have grown far more jaded for my age than I should be, and I look at people warily when they offer me anything, particularly if it sounds too good to be true. I have learned by sad experience that most of those opportunities are snake oil in drag, and so I know that they come loaded and likely cost me either more than I expect or something dear to me.

When I started college, I learned to distrust the "friendly" telephone call. Almost every Sunday when the phone rang, it was someone from church asking me to fill in for someone else's failure to properly prepare. Knowing that I would be home and have nothing else to do, people frequently turned to me. At first, I was flattered to be wanted; then I realized I was being used, so I took to taking walks for hours on Sunday morning and going down to the river to feed the homeless so as not to be a crutch on which others could lean. Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. I grew so suspicious of the loaded friendship that one Sunday, when my father called just to chat, I answered, "What can I do for you?" as became my modus opporendi. When he told me that he just wanted to find out how I was, I realized how suspicious I was.

Many of the people I meet try to sell me their arrangement as a win-win when it's anything but that. Sometimes it's not on purpose, but some people do so knowing full well that it will be a problem. Whenever I handle a gun, the first thing I do is check to see if it's loaded. You do this to make sure, even if you have good habits, that it can't accidentally shoot you or anything else. You see, as long as it's not loaded, a gun is just a very expensive hammer, and like all hammers it's there to drive in things that are sticking out so that they are more flush. If however the gun is loaded and something happens, even if you survive, it may still cost you your life, at least the life you were currently living.

Friendship no more implies absolute trust than absolute trust implies friendship. I take very few people on account, having been promised frequently that people will pay me back or make it up to me only to do nothing of the sort. I still remember the first girl who promised me a rain check for standing me up on a date; not only did that never happen, but she married my close college friend instead, leading me to think that she never intended to go out with me let alone make good on her representation. I take cash up front, I refuse to accept checks, and I ask questions. I look with my own eyes, educate myself, and do much of the legwork personally not because YOU have burnt me but because I have been burnt. I check to see if the deal is loaded. What will it actually cost me?

Particularly in our modern world, it pays to check for loaded guns. Years ago when a young female friend cut me off because her parents hated her talking to a man more than ten years her senior because we "only want one thing", I told her that she should listen. Although I know I'm different, I know that most people do have ulterior motives, and it's better to be safe than to assume you are the exception. The blade will catch you, the arrow will pierce you, and the stone will break you if they hit you where and when you are vulnerable. Guns do not discriminate. If they are loaded and someone pulls the trigger, they can kill whatever stands in their way. Properly used, guns are a wonderful tool. In the hands of fools, they make only blood in the marketplace. You need not be jaded and cynical as I am, but you need to watch your own back. No matter what others may say, nobody can care as much about your own welfare as you can, and if you're not watching your own back, then it's entirely possible that nobody will.