Goines On: Maggot caps & fraudsters

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To go out and hand their landscaper a check for the morning’s lawn work and a bit of weeding, Goines chose from his array of billed caps the red one with the “T,” which a neighbor had given him about five years earlier. Stepping out now with it on his head, he remembered his initial reluctance to wear it in public.
    Goines and the landscaper had talked politics on numerous occasions and found themselves happily quite aligned, so he decided to make a joke about politics. “You of course know what the ‘T’ does not stand for...,” he said with a grin that was visible because he wasn’t wearing a mask against Covid. But the landscaper was fiddling with his own mask – against dust and pollen – and so didn’t hear what Goines had said.
    “I said you know what the ‘T’ on my red cap doesn’t stand for….”
    “Ah, right! If it stood for that, it would be a maggot cap.” The landscaper smiled broadly and laughed. Had he actually said “maggot”?
    Goines in his turn laughed, and the two men nodded approvingly at each other.
    That interchange no doubt influenced Goines’ thoughts later, on his 30-minute walk. As he approached the police detective’s house, he remembered asking the detective a month ago what sorts of cases he investigated – did he encounter many suspects who were armed? The detective had shrugged and said he mostly investigated fraud cases, which he could do at his desk mostly, and he rarely confronted a suspect. Fraudsters frequently just came in to the station to surrender anyway, once they received their summons. 

    Goines, with the red-cap conversation in mind (though he was now wearing his sun hat), found the detective’s remark hard to believe, given the refusal of the man Goines’ hat’s “T” didn’t stand for to admit any of his frauds. 

    Walking on, Goines was saddened by the thought that fraud and many other selfish acts were committed in great number every waking minute. Rare were the humans who never acted selfishly – if there even were such humans. It was only natural to look for an advantage, a shortcut, a way around, a place ahead in the line….
    And the fact that the fraudster who adopted the slogan on the maggot caps had held high elected office sort of proved it, if anyone needed proof: an electoral majority of voting humans had put him in office.
    Goines stopped walking and paled to realize that, in making the “T” joke to his landscaper, he had been seeking the advantage of thinking himself superior to people who wore those caps.

Copyright © 2021 by Moristotle