Iremember a time when I thought if someone older said it, it must be true.
The young, innocent mind has a hard time comprehending things such as deviousness, personal interest, manipulation and predators.
As we age and evolve, we slowly learn that not everything that is said is true and not everyone is out to protect our best interests. We have it drilled into us at home and at school, and as time goes by, we learn of the threats that others pose, stranger danger and all that jazz.
But we still have trust, we even have the capacity for blind trust. All day, everyday, we walk around the world trusting something.
You trust your car will start. You trust your roof will still be there when you get home in the evening. You trust your alarm will sound at the scheduled time. And you trust that all those things will happen again just the same tomorrow.
But there is another way in which we trust, and I doubt you usually think about it.
Let me frame this for you: You want to buy the new Christina Aguilera song on iTunes. You click purchase and a button "agreeing to iTunes terms and conditions." I doubt you read these small-print conditions or feel the need to. I know that for my whole life, I have ticked the box and trusted that I was not signing my life away. We all do it don't we? Skimming contracts, signing waivers, clicking digital boxes with little to no attention, giving our trust and our signatures, digital and otherwise.
I have recently learned that this can lead to some unpleasant and expensive surprises. I bought a small portable exercise machines online from a home shopping website. I entered in my credit card number and ticked the appropriate boxes like I always do. To my surprise, a month later, a bottle of hot-pink body enhancement pills were delivered in the mail. They came the next month and the month after that, too.
It took me three months to realize that my credit card was being charge $20 a month because I had agreed in purchasing the item to become a member of the company's "fit club." Now I am stuck with $60 worth of pills I don't want and a further three-month commitment. Whoops, should have read the fine print (point 8 to be exact) in the purchasing conditions link.
Another thing I really should have checked out and thought through before signing was my apartment lease. Now, as a consequence of not double- and triple-checking my lease end date, I am being removed from my apartment (prematurely and against my will) a month before I had initially anticipated. But as my landlord has so kindly pointed out to me, "Should'a read it before you signed it!"
There is nothing like packing during midterms and moving during finals to teach a girl a lesson, which is, once again: Before you sign it, read it.
Naomi Yorke is a Port Coquitlam student who lived in Shanghai, China for four years, writing about her experiences twice a month for The Tri-City News. She now lives in Chicago, where she's attending art school, and continues her column.
