The Little Red Light Is On

I have a habit of always checking and double checking things. If someone tells me that, say, the library is open from 10AM till 5PM, I will probably call the library to verify that before I drive over there. It drives my wife crazy. She says that I never believe her. The truth is, I believe everybody but I usually check what they tell me. I’m sure it was President Ronald Reagan who (when referring to the Soviet Union) said, "Trust – but verify."

From long, sometimes painful experience I have found that frequently I am told things that range from being true to only half true, false, or a downright lie. Find yourself in a strange town and ask for directions and a large percentage of the time, someone will give you wrong directions rather than admit that they don’t know. Then I depend on that information and it ends up costing me time or expense – or both.

I remember going to my doctor and having him recommend a series of ultra-sound treatments for my injured ski knee. (He just happened to have one of those ultra-sound machines in his office.) I sat in one of the treatment rooms and in came a young technician wheeling a small stainless steel ultra-sound machine. It had a few dials, a power switch, a small hammer-shaped wand on an armored cable, a power cord and a little red light. She spread some petroleum jelly on my knee, flipped the power switch on, adjusted a few dials and began to gently massage my knee with the hammer thing. There was no pain, no vibration, no feeling of heat or cold and no sound (after all it was ultra-sound).

Ten minutes into the treatment I facetiously asked the technician, "I don’t hear anything, see anything and I don’t feel anything. How do we know whether this thing working?" I’m sure no one had ever asked her that before and she was a little confused by my question.

She thought about it for a long minute and finally she hesitantly replied, "Well, the little red light is on."

And I said, "Yes, I can see that but all it really tells us is that the red light is on. We still can’t be sure the machine is working can we?"

I didn’t pursue my questioning because it was clear that I was confusing the poor girl.

To be safe when you are given some information – especially when it is vital information – check it out. Just because the little red light is on does not verify that it’s working.

P.S. It did work and my knee felt much better after about four treatments.

451 words
© 2008 by Paul Burri