shoot first

It’s not often that you find yourself faced with a choice that actually questions your moral integrity. The trickiest choices aren’t the ones that don’t have a clear-cut ‘right’ decision, simply because no one can really blame you for making a ‘wrong’ decision since everything is so subjective. The trickiest choices are the ones which have very clearly defined ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ decisions, and sometimes the ‘wrong’ decision is the more attractive one to make.

Yesterday, I found an iPhone along the small road between Junction 8 and the bus interchange. It was on the road itself, propped up against the pavement along the double-yellow line. I noticed it because I’ve developed this habit of looking at the ground like 5 metres ahead of me so that I can avoid any cockroaches that may happen to be in my way (I can’t stand roaches).

I picked it up and headed to back to my car, examining the phone on the way. Once I was back in my car, I had a choice to make – I could either return the missed calls made to the phone, or I could simply turn it off and keep it.

Since I know how frakked up it is to lose all your stuff (my bag containing my iPod, my wallet – the works – was stolen in April last year) I decided to return the missed calls, but as it turned out the line had already been terminated (like less than an hour after the phone was misplaced – efficient or what?).

My goodness, I wanted to tell myself, “Well, at least you tried” and just leave it at that, but the dude’s phone number was staring me in the face and I couldn’t convince myself not to call back with my own phone.

Fast forwarding to this afternoon, I met up with the guy at J8 to get the phone back to him. I handed it over to him, he said “thank you so much” and shook my hand, and then he left.

So, instead of having a new phone, or maybe being a few hundred dollars richer, all I got was a handshake and some guy’s half-frakked gratitude. Did I feel good about myself? Did I feel all warm and fuzzy inside from the knowledge that I had done a good thing?

Frak. No.

Doing the right thing is overrated.