Last week, I was walking down the street and a guy selling Spare Change stopped me. He caught my attention by saying, "Hey, beautiful!", which, for future reference, is usually pretty effective. He shook my hand, introduced himself, called me beautiful a bunch more times, complimented my scarf, asked me if I had a boyfriend (I lied and said "yes" because, charming as he was, I didn't really want him to offer to be my boyfriend), said "of course you have a boyfriend, gorgeous lady like you," and told me I should tell my imaginary boyfriend that he's the luckiest man in the world, to have a beautiful girlfriend like me, and then, finally, he asked me for money. And I immediately gave him $2, without hesitation. He goddamn deserved those two dollars.
The next night, on Thanksgiving, the doorbell rang in the middle of dinner. A woman was standing on my porch, maybe my age, maybe a little younger. She nervously told me that she lived up the street and had locked herself out of her apartment and she didn't have her ATM card and she found a locksmith and her elderly neighbor had offered to write a check for him but he needed cash and she was $20 short and so could I help her out and "loan" her 20 bucks? She would totally pay me back.
Um, yeah. So I told her that I would certainly help her out, but I couldn't just give her $20 because, ha ha, I'm not saying this is the case but, you know, this could be a con and I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. At which point she got a very puzzled look on her face and started sputtering a bit. At which point I continued, and told her to come back when the locksmith arrived, and I would give him the $20.
She didn't come back.
Posted by thevieve at November 30, 2005 1:00 PM