The Thanking

A few seconds ago, I was involved in a situation that brought me into contemplation. About fifteen minutes prior to this event, I had asked a girl if I could borrow her textbook. Because of my outstanding charm, she decided to let me borrow the book. I used the textbook to decipher what was going on in class.

I finished trying to teach myself six-days of class work and came to the conclusion that in my class, we are a bunch of blind sheep being herded by a blind shepherd…across a highway. So hopefully picking up upon this description, you can understand that walking into class is like walking into a slaughter.

So, upon conclusion of my self-taught lesson, I returned the book to its owner. After accepting the delivery, she responded by saying “thanks.”

Now this might not have seemed that unusual or subject to contemplation, but I was perplexed as to why she thanked me for giving her book back. After all, I was the one that borrowed it. Shouldn’t I be the one thanking her? Was she really thankful that I had returned it? It’s not like I was heading off to Pakistan with an “I love India” t-shirt and might not have returned to hand back her book…

The issue at hand, or at least the issue I have, is that I am the one who is supposed to be saying thank you. She didn’t have to let me borrow the book; it was out of her kindness.

Another phenomenon which occurs that perplexes me: a guy is walking at a trepid pace when he rams into an unsuspecting, uncorrupted girl and after the contact, she blurts out “SORRY!”

But wait a sec, didn’t walking asshole just ram into you? Didn’t he initiate contact? He should be saying sorry, not angel girl.

To put it another way, suppose that you are driving up to a red light. You stop, and then the light turns green. You gently step on the pedal, and meander into the intersection. All of sudden, BAM! A driver runs the red light and t-bones your car! After impacting the airbag, the recoil from the crash cracks your septum and blood pastes the inside of your car. You manage to pull yourself out of the twisted metal frame of your vehicle, glass littering the road as you crawl out, gashing your palms. You make it to the other driver and motion for him to roll down his window. Gasping for air, struggling to remain conscious, you collect yourself and tell the driver, “…*gasp*… I’m so sorry you hit me…the light was green…I never should have gone…*blackout*…”

Now my incident is no where near as dramatic, or as outlandish, as the one that I just presented, but nevertheless, it represents the same issue: person, who makes an action or forces an issue, should take responsibility, and therefore say “sorry” or “thank you.” But for many of the instances I have seen, this has been reversed.

I don’t want to blame society for this problem, but you know what? It is society’s problem. There is this inexplicable fear of offending others, for whatever reason, I do not understand. Perhaps this figures into my situation today, with the girl thanking me for returning her book. Yes, it is polite to thank someone after a courteous gesture, but I should have been thanking her for letting me borrow her book. Would I have been offended if she did not thank me for returning her book?

I would have ripped her head off…

No…the likelihood of that event taking place is almost as great as the Middle East becoming a peaceful land…In any instance, my reaction wouldn’t have been anything significant.

No matter what I do, the question still looms:

Why was I being thanked?

I did not do anything worthy of praise. The book was not in my hands long enough to bring up question or doubt as to whether this girl would have seen her textbook again or not. I simply fulfilled the act of borrowing, which is to be expected, I don’t see the shock in that.

I could have been thanked for being alive or wearing pants, but instead I was thanked for returning a book. It would have been shocking if I had neglected to return the book to its rightful owner. After all, the terms of our agreement were that I would be the guardian of the book for only a short period of time. I feel that under these circumstances, an expected act of returning the book and the brief period of time that I had the book, I didn’t deserve any recognition for my actions. It was common courtesy on my part.

Bottom line: I don’t believe that I should have been thanked for my actions, and because I was thanked, I wrote about it.