Picture yourself driving into the local gas station with crazy Bobbie Ray behind the counter. His education was never completed and you’re driving a fairly new, sporty looking car. Your Polo shirt is authentic and your Dockers are crisp and clean. Your parents just bought you a new watch and it shines for all to see. You saunter into the station, drop your $35 for your fill-up, get your change and saunter out. Bobbie Ray doesn’t particularly like your look, your Polo or your nice wheels. He thinks for a second, calls the police and reports that you have driven off without paying for your gas. He isn’t concerned with false police reports because with his felony record, turning you in is just for fun!

Two miles down the road, you are apprehended by members of the local law enforcement. You are taken out of the car, patted down and read your rights. You have stolen gas. Now you realize it is simply Bobbie Ray’s word against yours. You don’t have a receipt, so how can you prove your purchase and payment? As you are put into the patrol car and taken to jail, wouldn’t a receipt have been an easy way to simply say, “I have proof that I paid!” Perhaps when you are sitting in the holding cell with a variety of interesting individuals, you start to think about that little slip of paper.

Or perhaps you have gone into the mall to buy some needed clothes, DVDs, food or anything else your heart desires. You collect bags and bags of materials, chatting with your friends in person and on the cell. You stop to text message and life is a joy to behold. A month later the credit card statement arrives informing you that you have charged more than $12,372.78 on this month’s billing. After being revived by your friends, you frantically look at the statement and discover you have charged most of that amount to a company in which you did purchase two pairs of socks, but the items and amount would be much more numerous. The receipt would have been two feet long and rounded out would have to show almost $13,000.00. You call the credit card company and they quickly inform you that you appear to have signed the receipt, but you tell them that you do not have a copy. “Well,” they say, “perhaps you should talk to the store.”

But what can you talk about? The store has a receipt that you signed agreeing to pay the amount shown. The problem is that the amount shown is not $12.37. It is $12,372.78.

My question is, “What CAN you do?” How can you prove anything? Isn’t it your word against theirs? How do you prove that you didn’t get everything that it says on the receipt in their possession?

Receipts are little, worthless scraps of paper that most people who are environmentally prone would complain about you asking for. They clutter our pockets, wallets and purses. They live on our dressers until we formally consign them to the trash. But just as most mighty nations have been brought down by the smallest of issues, and people who have buildup of plaque in their blood have been leveled by the blockage in the arteries, so too can those little receipts play havoc in our lives.

The next time you think to simply say, “NO!” to a receipt that is offered, take a moment to decide if you really want to argue your way (with a lawyer or not) out of a charge of stealing gas. Do you want to face months of grueling pain trying to get your credit card problems straightened out? Or, on the other hand, do you simply want to collect receipts for a safe period of time and then have a little bonfire to roast hot dogs over, hot dogs that you can prove you paid for?

Craig Gunn is a State News guest columnist and director of the communications program in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Reach him at gunn@egr.msu.edu.