Trust

While mowing the lawn Saturday morning, a small Vietnamese man with greasy hands holding several dirty paper towels, timidly approaches. I shut down the lawnmower. On Gaston Avenue, the best thing to do when approached by any stranger is to politely tell them to leave you alone. Most of the time, strangers on Gaston want money. And if you give any to them, they'll keep coming back like stray dogs begging for scraps. This guy had a different and plausible request. He asks: "Can I borrow wrench. I'm fixing car around corner." A request to borrow a tool is something I can indentify with. If my car broke down in a strange part of town, I'd want somebody to help me out by allowing me to borrow a wrench. So I thought, OK, I'll let him borrow a wrench, sort of as a social experiment. Maybe trust is something that should happen on Gaston to make it a more peaceful and loving place to exist. But there's no way I'm loaning out any of my good Craftsman tools. He'll get something from the cheap set of $20 tools I have in my truck.

I asked him what kind of wrench? Boxend, open end, 3/8th's . . . on and on. He really couldn't respond because he didn't speak English very well. So I went to my truck got out the tool box, brought it to him and let him choose. He selected a short Phillips head screwdriver and a big set of channel lock pliers. "I bring right back," he says. Good enough.

But my first clue the guy was not the responsible type occured was when he dropped one of his dirty rags on my front yard --- something he noticed when it happened. He turned off and walked down the street. "HEY!!!", I yelled at him. I pointed to the rag. He looked at it, smiled, and kept walking down the street.

So I finished mowing the lawn. No Vietnamese man. I fininished mowing the back yard. No Vietnamese man. I ran an errand and come home. No Vietnamese man. I went out with Karen to a party, returning at 11:30 p.m. No Vietnamese man. Obviously, I'll never see my phillips screwdriver or channel locks again. That's fine. I assumed as much.

But the next time some stranger on Gaston asks to borrow some tools, my answer will be no. If a guy's car is stalled in a smoking heap in front of my house, he'll have to find someone else to ask. And I will politely explain that if he sees a little Vietnamese man walking down the street with a phillips screwdriver and a set of channel locks, he can ask that guy for help. Because that guy is the reason I no longer loan out stuff to people I don't know.