Want to Borrow an Jack?

I thought I already posted on this topic once before, but couldn't find it. You know you have been blogging too long when you start to duplicate posts. :P Anyway, here goes.

When I was a teenager I heard a story that I have thought about many times since. I will just have to try to recreate it the best I can, I don't have the story anymore. I'm taking a little creative license, but the basic story is still there. :0) I wish I could say that I have learned from the story, but this is something I still struggle with.

A salesman was driving down a deserted country road when the car suddenly got a flat tire. He carefully pulled to the side of the road, got out of his car, and opened the trunk. He reached for where his jack SHOULD be, but found it gone. With no phone, and no nearby town, he fretted about what to do. Scanning the horizon, off in the distance he could see a farm house. He decided to walk to the farmhouse and ask the owners if he could borrow a jack.

As he walked down the road, he began to think about how he would ask them. He thought to himself, "They don't know me, will they be willing to loan out a jack to a complete stranger?". He so desparately needed the jack. Would they let him borrow it? "I know they don't know me, but surely they can understand my desperate situation." he thought to himself. As he walked along in the dusty road, with the sun beating down on him, he began to wonder what he would do if they wouldn't lend him the jack. "For Pete's sake!" he said out loud as he trudged along. "Where else would they expect me to get a jack?!" "Do they think I should walk the 40 or 50 miles in to town, or hope that a car will give me a ride along the way?".

By this time his shirt was getting drenched with sweat, and his feet were beginning to feel every rock in the road. "Not much further," he thought to himself. "Well," he continued, "if they are going to be so selfish, maybe I WILL make that long walk in to town. I can do it, I'm a grown man with two able feet."

As he approached the front walk of the farmhouse, the salesman took new determination. He wasn't going to be treated like dirt by anyone. He walked straight up to the door and knocked. When the farmer opened the screen door, the salesman looked him squarely in the eye and said as firmly as he could, "KEEP your stupid jack!".

I'm not sure if my ability to create assumptions comes from a perfected talent of worry, a creative mind, or something else. I do know that often when I find myself getting worked up over something I don't even have proof for, I try to stop and think of this story, and remind myself to wait until I see the evidence.