Truth

His thoughts turned to the old sea story of the young sailor that wandered around the base picking up pieces of paper, shaking his head and saying quietly, "That's not it." After months of scrutiny by Navy doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and all the related poking and prodding, he was being given a medical discharge. At the Personnel Support Department (PSD), they had him sign the discharge paper. He picked it up and read it, then suddenly shouted, "That's It!" and signed it. As the sea story goes, one expects the now ex-sailor is living happily ever after without medication or therapy.

Of course, it's only a sea story - maybe there is truth to it, maybe not, but there is some humor in it. But when he thought of the story, he recalled how throughout his life he himself seemed to be wandering the globe, meeting new people and throughout the course of his life whispering, "That's not it." In fact, in the grand scheme of things he felt more defined by what wasn't for him than what was - and he had become increasingly jaded when it came to the implicit mental and emotional question, "Is this it?"
 

One of the things I typically do with people is keep them off balance. To those in Trinidad and Tobago, this would be heckling - to those in other parts of the world, it would be called teasing. Reveling in the irony of situations, proper use of sarcasm and wit and the ability to react quickly to information even as it falls out of mouths is an art that almost always seems to take advantage of those not as quick on their mental feet.

An odd thing happened last night. The results of someone's lie got someone sent a legal letter - the kindest way to put it would be that the letter was misinformed. The most accurate would be that it contained outright lies - lies which I found evidence of in my late father's records.

Why the lie? The answer, quite simply, is greed and the want to get something for nothing. It involved land and Trinidad and Tobago law - and it is in process at this point, so I can't write the details of it yet. Let it be said that a person is claiming that they accumulated rights through not paying rent on land in Trinidad and Tobago - a measly $52 TT a year - approximately $8.25 US/year per acre. Sounds pretty rough, doesn't it? But they did pay rent. I found the receipts in their file. Did they expect we weren't keeping records? I suppose that was it.

To top it all off, this is after I was talking to them about the price of purchasing the land. Suddenly, they decided to negotiate by falsehood. Convenient.