I continued on my merry way towards class, and since I had some time to kill I popped into Peculier Pub on Bleecker for a beer. Now, as is my custom, I perused the menu for not a short amount of time to find a beer I'd never had before. One would think this would be easy, considering that they have around 300 beers on the menu, but not for this guy! As I'm cruising and perusing, a handful of rowdy, yet friendly gentlemen are going on and on about Beer Lao (an appropriate name for a beer from Laos, don't you think?). I finally make my decision and order a beer from the bartender, and she shyly informs me that they are out of the one I selected. The rowdy, yet friendly gentlemen took pity on me, and one of them said "after all that, you don't even have it? Get this man a Beer Lao, on me!" I repeatedly attempted to pay for my own beer, but the gentleman would have none of it. And then we got to talking, and apparently he had gone to Laos on a trip some years earlier and really enjoyed Beer Lao, and Peculier Pub is the only place he's seen it outside of Southeast Asia. Sweet! Free beer!
Az now I have free food and free beer. I almost scored the trifecta, but nobody offered to pay for my transportation.
Speaking of transportation and the trifecta, I would be remiss if I didn't mention this golden nugget. I was driving back to my apartment one evening, and I was listening to the traffic report on the radio to see if there was anything doing on the Henry Hudson Parkway. I can't remember anything about that, since the report was dominated by the broadcaster describing the traffic on the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges as a "trifecta of trouble." It was absolutely priceless. Words I need to use more: Trifecta. Also "trousers." I need to use "trousers" a lot more often. But that's another story.
Anyway, onto the issue of trust. In order to function, we need to have a certain amount of trust in everything and everyone with whom we interact. We have certain ideas in our head about how things are supposed to work. My close friend, Trusty McLoyalman would never do or say anything to hurt me deliberately. Speedy Airbaggington is a decent driver and will signal and look at his blind spot when switching lanes. Cloudy Stormerstein will do her best to give an accurate weather report on the news. And Yorkman O'Times will expertly give us stock tips based on his insider information. Another words, there sure are a lot of folks we trust, whether we want to or not.
But you want to hear an interesting one? What about authors? Some of us read a lot of books, and when we open a book for the first time, we are placing our trust in the author's hands. We trust that he or she has a plan, and the author will execute his or her plan regardless of the circuitous route we need to follow in order to get there. The difference with authors though, is that we are entirely at his or her mercy. The author has created an entirely new world with new creatures, new landscapes, and new rules. The further into the story we get, the more we come to rely on our conceptions of these rules. But what's to stop the author from throwing us a total curveball and screwing with our preconceived notions of those rules? Or worse, what's to stop the author from thowing us a total screwball and curving with our preconceived notions of those rules? The answer, of course, is nothing. With every page we turn we make a choice. Do I continue to trust this author? Is the next page going to reveal something so distasteful that I will choose to put the book down and pick up another?
I thought of these questions will I was reading on the subway this morning. I have no idea why the author forced our protagonist to do the dastardly deed, especially after spending the first 90 pages reeling me in. I have chosen to trust the author and press onward. We'll see if my trust is rewarded.
