When you were five, your mother probably told you not to run with scissors and not to play with the bottles of cleaning fluids under the kitchen sink.  If you were lucky, you listened to her.

When you were twelve, your father probably told you not to play with the electric drill or said “no” when you asked to drive the car.

Don’t climb on the roof.  Don’t cross the highway except at controlled intersections.  Don’t accept rides from strangers.

Your parents, in truth, were “nay-sayers.”   Those awful people!  Never mind that their goal was to keep you safe, teach you the right things, help you learn.

The same goes for all teachers, coaches, and mentors.

People in general don’t like “no.”  They don’t even like “Be careful!”  It gets in the way.

Now that most of us have grown up, we’ve learned the value of caution.  Whether in business, going out on dates, or teaching our own children, we have to use “no” when necessary.

Of course Mom and Dad also provided us with birthday parties, holiday presents, and trips to Disney World.   They weren’t completely evil, as it turns out.

So even though we’ve grown up, if you want to get your own goals accomplished, you don’t want anyone to rain on your parade.  There are plenty of people who will drive their cars for miles in the wrong direction even though the person in the other seat is saying “No, it’s this way!”  There are folks who will pay thousands to scam artists even though their friends tell them “No, they aren’t really Nigerian royalty who need your banking information!”

If, however, you were on a bus heading down a road where the bridge was out, how valuable would you think the guy with the road report was?  Even if you wanted to get to your Mom’s house for Thanksgiving, you would want to know you were headed for disaster.  You might also want to know that the driver was a deranged killer who planned to jump out at the last minute and let the whole bus go over the cliff.  You might just welcome “NO!” at that point.

The driver wouldn’t listen to that “No,” however, since his goals were not your goals.  The driver would be fine.  You’d need to get the word to the other passengers that you’d gotten a call from your Mom, bless her heart, that a deranged killer had car-jacked a bus and you were in danger.  Since everything seems fine on the bus at this point, it won’t be easy getting the other riders to listen.   Even if they know you, they want to get home for all the treats.  Their goal is happiness, so why are you saying “No!”

Why take a different road now?

Exactly.

The good people driving our City Bus, the City Council, still have time to take a new road to lower utility rates.  They can still check the road and weather reports, not take the bus driver’s word that the bridge is just fine and that driving the bus backwards the whole way is normal.  All the options are still there for them, even though Pilar Turner, Craig Fletcher and Glenn Heran still think we shouldn’t check ahead or behind.

Whether you still think you’re getting home for Thanksgiving or not, there are many clues that should be alarming.  One of their number, Tracy Carroll, has been displaced after showing reckless disregard for the law and her fellow citizens.  Another shows a narrow mind and shocking lack of concern for anyone who disagrees with his religion.  The third one can’t let the mayor do anything without yammering in his ear about where he’s going.

You’ve let others use your money, not theirs, on a wickedly bad road where already we’re stuck in some mud.  Mud about which, of course, you and the drivers were warned.

Happily, there’s time to review.  Collect your thoughts.  Find out why these people don’t want you to look.  Why they fired everyone who was trying to say “ Look at the numbers.”  Why they call everyone who wants to pay attention to the problems “Naysayers!”

We should all hope and encourage our new council, who all promised first and foremost to do what is right for our city, to take off the blinders that FPL has been handing out.  We can get lower utility rates right now by canceling the bogus extras they’ve been adding on to falsely inflate those rates.  We can get experts to look ahead for us, to give us the accurate road report.

Go ahead, you can let them call you names.  But look anyway.