Honestly? I Lack Trustness

I am a naturally suspicious person…at least I believe I am.

Who knows, maybe I was more trusting at birth and too many games of “got your nose” as a baby left me this way.

The good news? I still have my nose. The bad? I’m suspicious of everything and have trust issues.

As my son Nick would tell me, “You lack trustness.” Honestly, he’s right. I do lack trustness.

I’ll tell you about the time my sister and I almost got kidnapped…okay, almost got kidnapped is a bit of an embellishment…

I was traveling with my sister Kris. If you ask Kris, her take is very different from mine. I’ll tell you her version first. Don’t worry, it’s short.

We stayed a few days in London before heading to the dock in Dover to board our cruise ship. London was further from Dover than we realized, so we hired a car to take us there. (This should be read in a posh voice.)

We booked our car online the night before we left London. We got a confirmation email giving us the make and model of the car, as well as the driver’s name. The email cautioned us to make sure the driver and vehicle information matched our confirmation email.

A black Mercedes van pulls up and a sharply dressed, very cute driver gets out.

The driver asks, “Are you—”

Kris interrupts with, “I’m Kris.”

The driver opens the van door, Kris jumps in, and before I can even react, she’s in the van, sipping champagne, with her seat belt on like she does this every day. (There was no champagne, much to Kris’ disappointment.)

I get in the van and tell her the details in the email don’t match the vehicle or the driver.

Her response?

“But the driver is cute. Very cute.”

(Solid reasoning. Note to self: cute men don’t kidnap people?)

It does make me wonder…if the driver hadn’t been cute, would the details have mattered more?

I may have added some dramatic details so her version makes more sense.

Her actual version goes something like this:

Hired a car online. (No posh voice.) Cute driver. Sadly, there was no champagne. Long drive. “Look, our cruise ship.” Bye cute driver, hello cruise ship.

As our (cute) driver loaded the luggage, I put our trip details into Waze so I could make sure we were headed in the right direction. Then I asked Kris to send the details of our trip to her husband, Paul.

She did, and we set off for Dover.

Two hours later, we arrived at the dock safely.

The driver got out to unload our luggage. As we gathered our things, I leaned over to Kris and said, “I’m glad we didn’t get kidnapped. I was a little worried.”

Kris looked at me, blinking rapidly in confusion, and replied, “But…the driver was really cute.”

My husband, JP, believes my lack of trustness is due to the number of crime shows and murder documentaries I watch.

I disagree. Why would that affect my trustness?

I think it dates back to third grade.

When I was young, after I walked to school in 70 feet of snow, we would have a handwriting clinic. Ridiculous that it was called a clinic when we stayed in the same room and were taught handwriting by the same teacher…but hey, we were third graders, so what did we know?

Once your printing met the criteria, you got to start writing in cursive. And when your cursive was perfect, you got to write with a pen. Not any ordinary pen, but a special pen. The only criteria I remember is using proper hand positioning.

And I of course remember the one criteria that I did not meet. The one thing responsible for my trustness issues.

My hand positioning wasn’t really the issue. It was my death grip on the pencil.

The method of testing the grip was the real problem. The teacher would walk around the classroom looking over our shoulders at our writing. Every so often, she would try to pull the pencil out of the writing victim’s hand.

Some students had the perfect grip, and the pencil would slide right out of their hands. The student would get a “well done” and the teacher would move on to her next victim.

And then there was me.

I had a, um, firm grip on the pencil. The pencil would not slide from my hand. The teacher and I would roll around on the classroom floor fighting for possession of the pencil…

Did this really happen? Maybe…maybe not, but that’s how I remember it.

I strongly disliked the teacher sneaking up behind me trying to steal my pencil, so I became increasingly prepared and loosened my grip. Just like that, all was well.

Okay, maybe not.

Maybe my death grip got even tighter and it became more of a struggle to steal my pencil.

I did finally get to use the special pen, but it wasn’t until high school.

Okay, it might have been the last day of third grade.

And it wasn’t because I learned to grip my pencil properly.

I don’t know why she finally declared that I was worthy of the special pen. Maybe she got tired of fighting me for possession of the pencil. Maybe it was because it was the end of the school year and there was no more time to spend creeping around (like the Grinch trying to steal Christmas) stealing my pencil. Or maybe having a death grip on my pencil wasn’t a valid reason for failing me in handwriting.

I do know that to this day, I still have a death grip on my writing utensils.

And? I still lack trustness.