Do you suffer from Kind Blindness?

I’ll admit it. Certain people piss me off. So do many news stories. But what really gets my goat is when people cheat others. Or try to pull the wool over in one way or another. I don’t know why this sets me off, but I suppose it’s because I loathe the idea of anyone taking me for a fool or someone I care about. And the world seems to have more than its fair share of hucksters and charlatans these days so it’s likely you’ll run into them just like my buddy Gordon did.

Gordon, bless his heart, suffers from “kind blindness”—a condition that makes good people blind to the ill intentions hiding behind a stranger’s smile. So it’s no surprise he got taken by one such scammer last week while loading groceries into this truck. Gordon, who will give anyone the shirt off his back, saw no harm in engaging the friendly man who approached him with a cockamamie story about being in a bind and needing emergency funds to help his young son. The longer they spoke, the more Gordon fell for his B.S. and decided to help him. Without me going into the specifics, Gordon was ripped off to the tune of $400, believing the poor fellow would repay him as soon as he received his next paycheck due to arrive two days later.

Gordon didn’t get outraged at what happened, instead he felt heartbroken over being scammed by someone he initially liked and trusted. He felt like a loser, a dumb ass, a shlub all rolled into one, but never said a negative thing about the crook. Instead he posited that the guy must have needed the money more than he did while blaming himself for not being wise to the scam that seduced him into compliance. But I can tell you that after taking all that money from the ATM machine to help his new “best friend,” Gordon is broke now and this made me angry, and to be honest, I’m still stewing over it.

So the only peace I have right now over this is that I can warn others to think twice before falling for a stranger’s smile in a grocery store parking lot, or gas station, or post office, or any type of parking lot. Find out what they want. If it’s not to warn you that you have a flat tire or your fly is open, walk away.