Concerning trust

Back in the days when I was grossly underpaid but making a helluvalotta more money than I do now...ah, nice flashbacks. Back when I could contribute regularly to independent radio stations during their fund-raisers. Back when I could shop for my favorite colorful fashioney clothes at Oilily (now out of business, boo) and trendy boutiques. Oops. I was drooling a little bit there. Sure am jonesing for a new pair of jeans.

Anyway, back when I didn't have nagging second thoughts about spending money generally, I answered the call from a firefighters' relief fund, or maybe it was a disabled police officers' fund. It's hard to remember, but I answered with some small donation, on the order of $20 or $25. That opened a floodgate of similar calls. Well, "floodgate" is not quite right. It opened up a trickling that turned into a floodgate.

After a time, I got a call from a different, but similar-sounding, organization. Some kind of support service - like firefighters, or police officers, or ambulance drivers, or whatever, and maybe a different way of their being disabled and needing help. Such as having become injured in the line of duty, or killed in the line of duty, or having their funding cut and wanting help to host a camp for at-risk teenagers.

Goodness, well of course I can send you $15. The forms and information they sent - although this was a different "charity" - looked exactly the same as for the first one I donated to, which started up some low-level alarm bells. But $15: no big deal.

After a year, I guess, they call back again - "you gave so generously last time, do you think you could manage donating a little bit more?" Now the alarm bells get a little louder. "Is this a charitable organization that I can write contribution off to on our taxes?" Not that I'd contribute very much, but I guess it was my way of asking if the organization was bona fide.

"Of course," was the answer. I'd find the information on the back of the form they mailed me, upon which receipt I would send them my check.

I got the information in the mail, and read the small print very carefully. After that and a little internet searching I found, not to my complete surprise, that things weren't quite as legit as one would be led to believe. Although somewhere in there, a camp for at-risk teens or a fund for disabled firefighters MAY have been involved, it was orchestrated by a fund-raising business that kept anywhere from 85 to 90% of the money.

(here's a url for helping you to spot these thieves, in case you get a similar call:)
http://www.fraud.org/scamsagainstbusinesses/tips/charity.htm

Naturally, that struck me as positively criminal. So I didn't send any money in. I called the number on the back of the donation card to talk to someone at the organization about what scam artists they were, but got a place where I could leave a voice mail. So I did, telling them I thought they were bastards, they could kiss my meager donation goodbye, and they should take my number off their calling list.

After a couple weeks, they called back. Where was my donation? I explained I had left a message about that, but it must not have gone through. I asked the person I talked to whether he understood what a racket this money-raising activity was. He didn't know what I was talking about. I asked him to put me on the line with someone who would. I got someone else on the phone, and I asked straight out whether what I had found was true about the organization and how they kept nearly all the money for themselves. At least he was honest. I told him to take my name off their register and never to call me again.

Then the OTHER organization I had given money to before, called again and asked if I can afford to donate more. I said "no," and told them to take my name off their calling list.

Then another organization called. Similar emotional tug: widows of police officers killed in the line of duty or whatever. No, please take me off your calling list. Help the firefighters fund circus tickets for a kids' night out? No, and take me off your mother fucking master call list already! It's no exaggeration: it got to where every 3 weeks, we were getting a call from a needy emergency services group to sponsor something. (Mind: once you get on the register of a "charity" kind of thing, the do-not-call list doesn't help, and these calls are one of the reasons we don't answer our land line any more. Don't ask why we even have a land line anymore; that's another matter entirely!)

I remember once taking one of these calls in a bad moment, and I did something like called the person on the other end of the line a prick for participating in manipulating people's heartstrings so that they give money that the firefighters (or whatever) never see. And he quietly responded, "I *am* a firefighter, and I'm donating my time to work the phones to try and get contributions."

Pause. Giant pause.

What was I gonna do? There seemed two basic options. (1) Believe the guy on the other end of the line, and go with my trusting and generous instincts, and do a donation. (2) Don't believe him. Think instead: this is all part of the same operation, and the person on the other end of the line (for the likes of whom there is a special circle of hell set aside) is prepared to say any goddamned thing in order to sucker people like me into giving money.

I sadly went with the second option. I hated doing it. I apologized to the guy on the phone; if he really was a firefighter, then it wasn't him or his fundraiser (which in truth sounded in script an *awful lot!* like the other asking-for-money calls) that was the problem, but this thefty money-raising organization that was to blame.

It sticks out in my memory, because in that giant pause while I deliberated through that conscious choice I vividly perceived what crumbling trust feels like.

That phenomenon can happen - and I think it often does happen - so quickly that it's hardly noticed: when a homo-phobic politician gets busted for hiring a rent-a-boy to "carry his bags," your priest gets busted on child molestation charges, companies hire expensive lawyers rather than take responsibility and pay up for their mistakes. In those fast moments, it goes, "well of course you can't trust X" - maybe the crumbling of trust happens SO quickly, it's as though the trust was never there to start with. You know?

But when you can feel it, at least, how it seemed I felt it, it's like a horrible sense of psychic erosion. Like a balloon deflating in slow motion, where that balloon is your hope, and your love, and your support for all things good, all collapsing in on itself. (Interesting side-speculation about the choice of "balloon" to capture the sensation, and symbolic connotations balloons have....)

It sucked it feel it, but also curious is the pondering now of the effect of this happening - in the moments when it occurs so quickly that it's not even noticed - by the myriad moments and news stories that cross our paths.

What can we do to maintain a state of buoyancy? I think I'll ruminate on that and maybe answer my question, at least for myself, another time.