Honesty, complete honesty is sometimes rare but always welcomed.
Steve Rogers
By nature I am a Cynical person.
Why? It can be argued there may be good reasons, maybe not.
I grew up in the south in the 1940s in a small town where gossip was faster then the town paper. We knew for a fact when Betty Sue got ‘…in a family way…’ she was trash or when Frank Jay did not go to church on Sunday, he was still drunk from booze and drugs from partying all night and when Ruth Ann’s five children all looked like they had different fathers, they did. Rumors, gossip, and hear-say that were never true , well maybe, but made you wonder. When you are a teen-ager talk kinda made you suspicious but you never ventured out from behind snickering hands and back yard hearsay to look at the real person where the talk was aimed. It was always easier to listen to gossip and believe the worse of a person. Some folk’s call that Human Nature while others call it being suspicious or skeptical. The word cynical has the connotation of evil but because of my nature when I see a spade...,I call it a spade.
Learned teen habits are hard to overcome in later years.
But I did... I think.
After college, I had a career in the military and can cuss like a drunken sailor when my brain goes into its stupid mode and because of my youth I have been known to do many wild and not so smart actions against my fellow man. In those twenty military years I saw all sides and traits of mankind, from the pentagon where I helped make life and death decisions normally with intelligent and hopeful honest people to the battle fields of sunny Vietnam where many of my decisions were made thought the sight-pictures of my M-16. In the jungle I never knew who was smart or honest only what uniform they were wearing. You don’t have to be smart to pull a trigger nor do you care about the image that is your target. You don’t know nor care what that target had for breakfast, if they had children or if they were an honest, caring, intelligent person or if they have lied in the past. Your cynical mind always justifies they are the bad guys and deserve their fate.
After the military I worked another career for Uncle in Washington D.C.. That was scary.
I saw first hand that Cynicism is rampant in politics and right or wrong it is the bed we vote for ever four years. Who can you believe? When my President tells me folks are bad and deserve to die I figure he/she has gone beyond the gossip mill and know what he is saying. I believe because, after all, I am not a teenager any more. I listen to all the news from the Right, from the Left, the Liberals the Conservatives, the good, the bad and the ugly and I usually make up my own mind, but still there is cynicism.
The last time I was in LaFayette Park there was a protesting group of ladies advocating carnal knowledge to protect Virginity. Go figure.
I am not a teenager any more but I sometimes feel I have not out-grown my stupid and suspicious stage. I still only believe half of what I see and nothing I am told.
Then Steve Rogers enters my picture.
I have never actually met Steve, but we have talked on the phone and I am not cynical or suspicious or distrustful of him. He is an Honorable and honest person.
How do I know that?
Steve runs the South West Optics business in the UK and is incredibly trustworthy. What makes me so positive in this conviction?
Real time is November 2005 and the time of the year I begin making my Christmas list, checking it twice and trying to find that all important perfect gift. I listen to suggestions, to innuendos to body language and I always listen very carefully to that that is not said. It is amazing the ideas you can come up with to what is not said.
For this very special person I came up with Optics as their gift. Not your everyday optics but special and the kind Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Radio Shack don’t carry. I found the perfect gift online, on the Internet. The store was seven time-zones away but the gift had to be just perfect with no substitutes. IF I had been able to find the same optics in my U.S. Central time zone I would have been happy to pay a reasonable price but because all stores and internet stores where out of stock and would have to backorder I choose South West Optics. Because of the weak dollar again the Pound Sterling my special optics were almost twice what the item would have cost IF I could have found it in the States.
Why do I still say the nice things about Steve Rogers if he was charging twice the going U.S. price? My reasoning was his phone call and his words.
Backordering gives me the chills and is a hold-over from my early cynicism as a youth, as a military person and my face-to-face reality of the world I live in today. The last item I backordered at this time of the year arrived the following May.
Steve Rogers called me a couple days ago. It was a Sunday evening and he was seven time zones away but he called to tell me I would be wasting my money if he filled my order. He had researched my order and found where I could buy my Optics, in the States, for a fraction what he would have to charge. We chatted for several minutes about backordering and need as a Christmas gift before it dawned on me he was paying international phone rates which can be an arm and a leg sometimes.
He made a business decision that cost him a nice sale by allowing me to cancel my order, but his voice inflected what he had done was his character, his nature, his personality and temperament and the right thing to do.
My youth and much of my adult life was remembered as I re-cradled the phone. I do not attend church as regularly as I should but I am a religious person. As the years go past faster in retirement, I sometimes do some cramming for finals from King James, just in case. I just re-read Jeremiah 5:1-3 and smiled as I remembered Steve Rogers.
Then there is Christopher Morley and folks like Scrooge and Bush but they are another story.
When it comes right down to it, all we really have is our integrity. My grandmother always said that a lie could make it down the road before truth managed to turn the first corner. Anyway, wonderful story and thank you for your military service...I know it costs our soldiers far more than can ever be repaid.
