On stupidity

Did my usual Monday running around, finished up my Christmas shopping, did some grocery shopping, went to the gym, watched 1.33 B movies.
I thought my grocery bill was a little high today (you'd think I was a marathoner or something) and so I scanned through it and nothing was out of order except I was charged $3.36 for an avacado. Then I thought "didn't I buy two avocados?" except I had only unpacked one. Then I wracked my brain trying to remember if I had in fact bought just one because I was pretty sure I had bought two but as I had unloaded all the groceries and there was but one sole avacado I decided that the price of avocados must have increased exponentially due to some horrible avacado blight or something.
Anyways, I just found the lost avacado in my kitchen cupboard with the walnuts. My first point is that I am very good at convincing myself things that I would like to believe.
The other strange thing that happened today was that I bought a book at Chapters and gave the teller a gift card that had a balance on it along with the book. He rang it through and it still came to around $26 which seemed a bit exorbitant to me and so I checked the bill and I couldn't see where he had used the gift card and so I went back, butted in line and said "I'm sorry, was there no balance on the gift card I gave you?" and he said "What gift card?". I said "I gave you a gift card when I gave you the book" and he looked around the counter and said there wasn't one there.
So this reminded me of one of Michael's nieces who went to the bank to deposit a cheque and some cash and the teller didn't give her a receipt and so she asked for one and the teller did a song and dance and Emily demanded a receipt and the receipt was for $50 less (which was the cash amount) than her actual deposit: the teller had pocketed the money.
This is all coming back to me as I stand there waiting for him to find the gift card which he eventually does. It was on the floor. And half of me is thinking what a good gig. I mean, who scrutinizes their bills very closely, especially during the frenetic event known as Christmas. He could have knocked any number of gift cards to the floor and then combined them all up to buy... like, Eat Pray Love or something. But he seemed sincere and he didn't get flustered and he apologized several times and so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
My second point is that I do tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. This has led to me being ripped off in various ways over the years and yet I still believe that most people are fundamentally truthful and wouldn't lie to me to get something.
Put it all together and you have someone that is willing to believe things that don't necessarily always jive while at the same time also wanting to take people at their face value.
On the plus side, avocados aren't as expensive as I had earlier thought, and I have two of them.