Wrongfully Accused

Many years ago before we had our own house, we lived in a 4-plex. R decided to rent a lawnmower out of his own pocket to mow the grass since the people who normally took care of it seemed to have vanished and it was getting rather long. He mowed the grass and then returned the lawnmower that afternoon. A week later I got a threatening letter from the rental place saying we owed them over 800.00 for the lawnmower that wasn't returned. I about died. I called R immediately and asked him if he returned it. He said yes, he had returned it about 3 hours after he rented it.

I went down to the rental place the next day with the letter and the receipt in hand. The owner, shouting at the top of his lungs called me a liar, said the lawnmower was not in their inventory and that if I didn't pay I would be taken to court. I suggested that we go look at all the lawnmowers and compare their serial numbers to the one on the receipt. He didn't want to do it, but I told him I wasn't going to leave until we checked. He threatened to call the police, and I said yes please do so we can settle this matter. Sure enough the lawnmower was there. The person who checked it in when R returned it had done it incorrectly. I never got an apology.

Some years later the IRS came down on us for two years of state taxes not filed from eight years before. We were supposed to pay the maximum amount as a penalty. That one took me three weeks to clear up. For those two years R had worked in Wyoming which doesn't have state taxes, so there wasn't anything to be paid. But since he had worked in Colorado the years before and after they just believed we hadn't filed the taxes. I had to go all the way back to get copies of W-2 forms and it was a huge rigmarole. Naturally since it was the government we didn't get an apology for their mistake.

Compared to those two things, what happened today is pretty minor. Nonetheless it's still bothering me a lot. Today I was reported on a site that I list bears on for breaking the rules. I didn't do it, I wouldn't do it...I am not that kind of person. It was most likely a glitch when I edited one of my pieces to reflect that I sold it. Given enough time I probably would have noticed something was amiss and contacted the site owner myself. But instead I received a lecture from them. I explained what I had done and not done. I don't know if they believed me or not. But I didn't get an apology. I am sure there will always be people who believe I did it though. That's the part that bothers me. There is no paperwork or forms I can get to back up my innocence. I can only hope the site history is recorded so it will reflect that I didn't do it.

Now I am no saint, but I do try hard to do things the right way. All of these situations could have been avoided if someone would have simply checked a little further before accusing us of doing something wrong. You can go through life doing things right, following the rules and sometimes it just doesn't matter...and you know what...that just plain sucks. (Pardon my french!) But an apology would go a long way...I wonder why we never get one?