Trust Issues

 With a baleful eye he stared intently at the proprietor of the small shop. Then he looked down at the ring in his own right hand and back to the bills being proffered him in the extended right hand of the assayer.

"It is not," the man said, 'that I do not trust you specifically. It is that I trust no one, not one single person."

The metallurgist looked back directly into the customer's wary eyes and replied, "Yes, I can see that. But you have witnessed yourself the results of the water level test. I'm satisfied it's real gold, somewhere between 16 to 18 carat. What I am offering you for it is based on the going rate for 18 carat."

The man winced a little and shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, If that's the best I can get for it, then that's that...no point in hanging on to it."

As he dropped the ring into the left hand of the goldsmith his eyes seemed to dim a little. 

He took the money and then pulled his wallet out and, after counting the bills and placing them in descending numerical order, dead president's faces toward the front, he put them in the billfold.

The goldsmith looked compassionately at the man and said, "Divorce is hell, I know, I've been there. Pretty hard to trust any woman afterward."

With a sigh the man replied, "Oh, I don't blame women for my trust issues - I blame myself. I made the decision to marry someone I really didn't know all that well. I take full responsibility for that. That's why I don't trust anyone anymore. How can I if I can't trust myself?'