Trepidation

"One shouldn't have to feel trepidation about car repairs" my husband announced on the way back from dropping our car off at the shop. Why not? The car needs work because the last guy who worked on it screwed it up. Is there honesty in the country today? We sure get worked up about foreign terrorists, but how much more damage are everyday Americans doing to each other through crooked business deals, insurance fraud, frivolous lawsuits and outright theft?

I read in the news today that some woman had run off with $4000+ in Girl Scout Cookie money and left the rest of her daughter's troop without funds for a planned camp visit. My local newspaer is full of reports of people knocking off Grandpa during his night shift at the convenience store so that they could steal a few hundred bucks. (Their OWN Grandpa, mind you - not even a stranger. More convenient if you know the person I guess.) Another kid evidently stabbed himself in the chest so he could claim that 'robbers' got the money he actually stole himself from the movie theater he managed. A woman I used to work with had her house broken into and her jewelry stolen when she was in the hospital recovering from surgery. She found out later that it was her daughter's boyfriend - he knew the house would be empty.

My father used to lecture us on the 'slippery slope' theory of moral degeneration. He'd rub his finger back and forth on the dining room table and say that while he wasn't making much of an impression on the table at the moment, if he kept it up he'd eventually wear a hole in it. Once we started hearing the word "damn" in everyday speech, we weren't too far from not flinching at "f***." Once we got over our initial disbelief over the McDonald's "coffee burn" lawsuit years ago, we weren't surprised that they were being sued for making someone too fat. After Enron, who can be surprised anymore at anything a big corporation does to put investor's money into individual pockets?

We aren't even outraged any more. We expect to be ripped off and just hope it won't be by too much.

Morality is, to some extent, an individual thing. I'm old enough to know that there are possible gray areas and differing, legitimate, opinions about what constitutes a wrong. But most of the time it is pretty clear, and we are all paying, dearly, for the slippery slope.

I just hope the car gets fixed and I can afford to "ransom" it back.