David McElroy

Police in a Chicago suburb are crediting two teen-age girls with helping them arrest a man who is clearly a danger to public safety. This criminal had the audacity to offer a ride to a couple of teen-age girls who were walking home in a snowstorm with no coats.

That’s right. The “stranger danger” worry warts have scared children so much that even a reasonable offer is suspicious, so the teens called police and reported his tag number. What’s even crazier is that police and media are treating the girls as though they did the right thing and that the Good Samaritan was the troublemaker. Take a look at the lede on this story about the incident from a Chicago television station:

Two 13-year-old suburban girls are being credited with helping police catch a man who offered them a ride home.

Think about that for a second. These girls are being “credited” with helping police “catch” a man who … did what? … offered them a ride home.

There is no allegation that Rodney Peterson did anything other than offer a ride. There’s no allegation that he had any bad intent. He didn’t try to entice them into a car. He simply asked how far they had to walk and if they needed a ride. One of the girls said, “We’re OK,” and waved him on, so he left. And that — in the insane world where we live — is “disturbing the peace.”

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When I was younger, I thought constantly about the things I wanted to accomplish, because we live in a society that’s geared toward achievement. But when I was being encouraged to dream big back then, nobody ever warned me about tradeoffs. Nobody warned me that you give up some things in order to pursue other things. I was under the impression I could have it all.

I’ve thought a lot about choices in the past few years. For a long time, I tried to avoid making choices, because I looked at life as a buffet where you just kept adding to your plate. Maybe my metaphor wasn’t too far off, but I didn’t realize that the “plate” we have in life is of a limited size. If your plate is full, something has to come off as you add more to it.

If you devote yourself to pursuing a dream of some kind — wealth, fame, early retirement, whatever the carrot dangling in front of you is — you always give up something else. Only you can decide which tradeoffs are worth it — and nobody can spare you from the certainty of having to make the choices, whether they’re conscious or unconscious.

As I thought about this Monday night, I was reminded of a quote from investment guru Jim Rogers. In his book, “Investment Biker,” he discussed the tradeoffs involved in pursuing whatever it is you want:

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I find it odd — but not unexpected — that so many people were “choosing sides” last week in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman issue based on their existing political/social narratives. The facts in the case seem to be constantly changing, so how can anyone have so much confidence about what happened to have a firm opinion about it?

It seems as though most black political leaders are absolutely sure that Martin was murdered by Zimmerman simply for being black in a gated community. They’re convinced that Zimmerman simply followed Martin and murdered him. They want him arrested and charged with murder.

Another group of people — mostly conservatives — are convinced that Zimmerman is innocent. Some of them have set up a defense fund for him and they’ve been gleeful at times to find negative things to report about Martin. To them, it’s all about gun rights, so any assertion that Zimmerman did something wrong is ignored in the name of Second Amendment rights.

I don’t know what happened. I mentioned early last week that I didn’t really have anything to say about the case yet because I didn’t know what the facts were. I still feel that way. As far as I’m concerned, it’s possible that an angry Zimmerman shot Martin in cold blood simply because he didn’t like him in his neighborhood. It’s also possible that Martin was angry at being followed and attacked Zimmerman, leading to Zimmerman shooting to defend himself. I’m sure there are other possible narratives that I haven’t even thought of. That’s the thing. I don’t know the facts. You don’t, either.

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