Absolutely not. I’ve heard this saying lots of times: “promises are pie crusts, made to be broken”.
I’m not taking this literally, thinking a promise is made out of pastry. Instead I know this means people take promises lightly and make them wantonly. Trust is built on reliability not on someone making fatuous pie crust promises which they have no intention of keeping or if they do keep one, it’s only because they can be bothered to, regardless of the need for them to do so and the trust placed in them by the person the promise is made to.
Trust when you cannot see
How do I as a blind person know I can trust someone? I don’t. At least not for some time I don’t and by then they may have plotted to get up to all sorts from telling me they have cleaned the sink and got tea stains off or whatever, only for me to find a great lump of gunk in the plughole, to not putting items of their own onto my shopping list and letting me pay for them, both of which have happened. My true crime knowledge came into its own when that happened. S came as my home help. She asked if I would mind her picking up two tins of black beans for her children’s tea and I said
“no, that’s fine”.
I didn’t hear tins clunk into the trolley so when I got home I asked her:
“Did you get the beans”?
“No. I forgot”.
She gave me the receipts and luckily, after she had gone I put them into my talking scanner and on my list were two tins of black beans. I phoned one of the two J’s at AgeUK, telling them what happened and they struck her off their books at once and apologised to me profusely for the incident.
I know that you are allowed to leave the store from which you have shop lifted before being apprehended by the store detective because all the while you are in there, you could argue that you were going to pay for your items, stuffed up your jumper to keep them warm. That’s why I waited for her to come home with me and asked her while she was here, whether she had picked up the beans so she had a further opportunity to steal if she wanted or could backtrack and tell me it was an oversight and give me the money.
In contrast, how did I know I could trust Lisa? Well she came when poor Chris, who has since died, was off. My hoover was playing up and she offered to ring on the following Friday to see if it had been fixed by Chris. True to her word, she rang and I thought, just as they said at school and church:
“If a person is honest in little things they will be honest in big ones”.
In other words, Lisa kept her promise.
Honesty
At first, when she became my support worker and we went out, she asked if she may pick up a couple of items and I told her I was in a difficult position because S stole from me and how. I explained that I didn’t want to tar her with the same brush but how could I know this wouldn’t happen again?
“I understand perfectly. We’re not meant to do that anyway”, meaning that the client isn’t obliged to let a support worker get little shopping items but it’s not actually forbidden unless someone would be so stupid as to get all their shopping in the client’s time and there’s a bit of give and take in any relationship no matter of what it constitutes, professional or personal friend. Now I realise Lisa is totally trustworthy and though she definitely does not have Asperger’s, she displays some leanings towards autism such as being a completer and hating rudeness when people don’t say “thank you”, being conscientious and thorough and keeping her word and is totally honest but she’s far too sociable to be an “Aspie”, loving it when people call, having friends to stay, knowing not to be blunt enough to put people off her yet being quite theatrical like an actress would be and is highly intelligent and copes well with my eccentricities.
To K and to me, promises are vows.
They may not be actual vows in the same vein as marriage vows but they are definitely to be kept because how else can people know they can trust us? When my neighbour and friend goes on holiday, he knows I will check to see no post is poking out of his door. He knows about the speech software on my computer so is helpful when it comes to me learning it. He can go to visit his sister in the sure and certain knowledge that I will not under any circumstances bar illness or death, forget to check that letterbox because I promised him I won’t. If I can’t promise something then I will say:
“I won’t promise but I’ll see what I can do”.
Promises are not to be made lightly. My poor friend K had become so disillusioned with people promising and then not fulfilling them that when I said to her in the early days of our friendship:
“I will write to you every day your parents are away”
she thought:
“We’ll see. I doubt she will”.
Because I did, she then knew she could trust me. I was over the moon when I found out she sees promises the same way. One doesn’t have to promise things. You can always say:
“I won’t promise but I’ll try”.
If you are ill and can’t come when you intended to visit or call. Then just a simple text or email will do, but never ever make a promise lightly, especially to a child. They set great store by what you say and all they have are adults who run their lives and on whom they depend so make and keep your promises, explain why you can’t when you can’t – Sudden death or illness of a loved-one and eat and enjoy your pie crusts. They are not the same. The former is meant to be kept, the latter to be broken and enjoyed.