Collateral

Sometimes you want to help others but can't trust them.
Sometimes they have something you want but you cannot buy.

Sometimes these two realities align in such a way as to make a tenuous situation that devolves into a miserable experience for one of the parties.

 In sixth grade I had such a situation occur to me.

Tesla did a cover of the song Signs and it was a song I liked.
A kid in my class, Mark, had the single cassette of this song.
One day, when he happened to have the cassette with him he had a need for cash.
I happened to have $6 on me and he, somehow, knew this.

I found him to be untrustworthy and I did not want to comply with his request to loan him the $6.
This is when he produced the single cassette and offered it as collateral.
This, being a song I actually really liked, became a difficult deal to resist. I like helping people, I wanted him to like me and there was some additional pressure to accept the deal from another classmate, Nick.

I borrowed the cassette and I enjoyed the tape for some time; through until the prearranged day that I was to get my $6 back and return the tape.

I remember it clearly. I remember which of the "secret" pockets in my jacket I had stored the tape and I remember the conversation.

A slyly smiling Mark and a smirking Nick told me that Mark had the money and they showed it to me.

I went to get the tape from my jacket... and it was not there.
I searched my cubby (we didn't have lockers) and it was no where to be found.

"What's wrong? Did you forget it?" was the sarcastic and snarky response.

I knew, then, exactly what had happened but I had no way to prove it.

Either Nick or Mark had gone through my stuff, including my jacket, and found the tape.
They stole the tape back prior to presenting the money for the return exchange.

It was solidified for me when Mark put forward the final comment of "oh, well, if you'd taken better care of my tape this $6 would be yours again."

This incident, along with countless before it that Nick had been involved with, outlined that I could not trust Mark, either.

Sadly, my options of peer interaction were incredibly slim in number.