Just One Sentence.

I am just sitting here in the mega-bookstore on a hot hot HOT humid day.
Drinking a hot coffee.
Interestingly enough (or not), even when it is hot outside, I still drink hot coffee.
Go figure!
I never indulge in any of the plethora of cold drinks available. All of the iced-frappuccinos, and coldahoozits, and whatchamafreezings that are now the rage in all of your high-end coffee emporiums.
Nope.
It can be 450 degrees fahrenheit outside (incidentally, one degree more, and paper ignites) and I still order coffee made with water from the river Styx!
What can I say? I am a coffee purist, and coffee was meant to be HOT.
To me, cold coffee is as absurd as hot ice cream!

But on to more important matters.
Today I am thinking of a really interesting phenomenon that takes place in mega-bookstores, especially in their coffee-drinking areas. Think of it as a wee study in human nature. If monkeys did the same thing that I am about to describe, Jane Goodall and a team from National Geographic would be right in there documenting it.
Here it is.
Invariably, if you are going to spend any considerable amount of time sitting in a mega-bookstore (like, let’s say.... ¾’s of your entire waking life.... not to say that I KNOW anyone that does this or anything...) but, invariably, there will be moments when you have to... (ahem)... abandon your post, so to say.
Umm.... go and sort of drain off some of that coffee, for instance, OR... go and get another cup of it.
Or go and use the payphone. Cut your fingernails. Get a haircut. Iron your clothes. Stuff like this.
But the thing is.... you’ve got a couple thousand dollars worth of laptop-computer sitting there, and you don’t want to pack up all this gear for such a trivial matter as a quick trip to the loo!
Are you getting a visual here?
So... you sort of look around.
Then, you look at this guy sitting at the next table. You sort of half-cough, and say “Excuse me? Can you watch my stuff for me? I’ll be right back.”
Nineteen times out of twenty, the person will nod and oblige you.
And you walk away.

My question is this.
How do I know that this isn’t the VERY GUY that wants to take my laptop home with him?
I mean really.
Is he not as much of a random stranger as..... the next guy?
Have I taken his drivers license with me, and promised to return it to him when I am safely re-united with the belongings I have entrusted to his care?
Not at all. And the thing is, if my laptop were stolen (God forbid) while I was blissfully tinkling the time away elsewhere, I would want to go directly out into the street with my eyes closed in hopes that a bus flattens me! That is how serious this whole issue is folks!
Yet I do it. All the time.
I can think of only one time when a person flat out responded with “NO!”
As in, “No, I will not watch your stuff. I am not a security guard!”
Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me!
Almost always though, you get the nod, and even a smile.

OK, so here is what I have concluded. It says something positive about human nature, really.
JUST ONE SENTENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE CAN BUILD TRUST.
There is really no other explanation for the fact that I can walk away and “do my business” with nary a worrisome thought as to my dearest possession being out of eyesight.
I have asked a fellow human being an optional question, they have responded in the affirmative, and I have trusted them.
Isn’t that neat?
I think so.
JUST ONE SENTENCE!

And with it the stranger has become.... not so strange.
I know this because I have so often been the person who was ASKED the question by another.
“Excuse me, can you watch my stuff for me? I’ll just be a minute.”
I have never said “No.”
So I know what it is like to be on this end of the computer-watching racket!
As much as I would never steal a laptop computer in the first place, (even if there were a big sign over it saying “Steal this computer”).... how much MORESO would I not steal it when a fellow humanoid has asked me to guard their own?
And when they return, there is always this little smile.
It is an acknowledgement that together, just the two of us, in our co-operative collusion, have warded off a slavering band of marauding Computer-Mongers.... look, four of them are still slinking away among the Cookbooks even as we non-verbally speak of it....
And we say, “Thank you.”
And we say, “No probs.”
Hope for the human race.
We just need to talk a bit more.