We Are Very Trusting People

Have you ever noticed how often we trust total strangers? I mean, we put our very lives in their hands, and quite often we don’t know these folks from Adam.

I was thinking about this a while back when I was out of town on a business trip. I had to board a bus at 6:30 a.m. for a 2-1/2 hour ride to a production facility. (Trust me, I would not have done that unless it was required for my job. I’m not in the habit of taking multi-hour bus rides just for the fun of it. And the next time someone uses the words “bus” and “fun” in the same sentence will be the first time.)

Anyway, as I climbed on board the bus, I noticed the driver looked about as tired as I felt. I took a seat and tried to fall asleep, but my brain started asking me questions. “Hey pal,” it whispered to me, “What do you know about this bus driver? How do you know he got a good night’s sleep? How do you know whether he’s struggling with a substance abuse problem? Or if he had a fight with his wife last night? Or if he has serious financial problems and has concluded there’s no reason to live anymore? How do you know any of those things, pal?”

“Oh, shut up!” I yelled to my brain, which caused other people on the bus to look at me funny.

“I’m just saying, pal,” my brain said quietly. “How many times have you heard on the news in recent years about a sleep-deprived bus driver who nods off and steers his bus right off the interstate and down a steep ravine and everyone onboard gets killed?”

“Oh please,” I replied. “We’re in Kansas City. It’s flat. There are no steep ravines.”

“Yeah, but lots of bridge abutments. Busses tend to disintegrate when they smash into those suckers.”

“Thanks for the visual,” I said sarcastically. “Look,” I continued, “The bus driver is fine. We’re not going to crash.”

“Oh, I see,” my brain replied. “I didn’t realize you two were such good buddies. You know everything about him, huh? Well, that’s comforting. Enjoy your nap. Oh by the way, what do you know about the pilot who’s going to fly you home tomorrow? Do you know for sure he’s not one of those pilots with a drinking problem? Or if he’s similar to that German pilot last year with the clinical depression issues, who decided to steer his plane into the Alps?”

“There are no Alps between Kansas City and Connecticut,” I said.

“That’s true, pal,” my brain answered. “So I guess nose-diving into a New Jersey suburb at 800 mph won’t hurt at all.”

“Would you please shut up?!” I yelled. Once again, other folks on the bus looked at me funny.

Despite its rudeness, my brain did raise an interesting point. We put our lives in the hands of total strangers on a regular basis. Besides bus drivers and airline pilots, we also trust pharmacists to put the correct pills in the little bottle. We trust the anonymous geek who wrote the software for our GPS device, and when the computerized voice says, “Turn left onto Maple Street,” we simply turn left without checking to see if we might be heading down a one-way street the wrong way. When the auto mechanic says, “OK, you’re brakes are all set,” we jump in the car and drive away, never once wondering if he forgot to install an important component, such as the actual brakes. 

As my brain often says to me, “Hey, pal, relax. What’s the worst that could happen?”