I went to Wal-Mart today. When I parked and was getting kids out of the car, I was approached by a man holding a broken key. He explained to me that his key had broken in his ignition and he needed to have $30 to have a new key made & be able to get back to work. He said he was short $8. I normally do not carry cash on me, but today was his lucky day. He said he had change for a $20, so he pulled some wads of money out of his pocked and "counted" them. After handing me $11, he walked away. I watched him for a few seconds, wondering if he had been telling me the truth. (Ummm...he had both halves of his key & it would have taken a lot of force to twist & break his key like it was...So why wasn't part of his key still in the ignition??) I uncrumpled the money & counted it, only to realize that he only gave me $7 or 8, at best. As soon as I had counted it and realized I very likely had been fooled, I was approached by another man. This man had fresh, homemade tamales for sale. I didn't have the $12 he wanted for them, but he looked at the money I had been counting. I told him I only had $7 or 8 and he happily handed over the tamales, eager for an exchange.
On one hand, I think I had probably been taken advantage of. Who knows. On the other hand, I'm glad I was able to help someone whose family member had obviously gone to a lot of work in order to make & sell something for a few bucks. We will definitely enjoy the tamales, but I think I will continue to wonder about that mangled key I saw. Either way, I entered Wal-Mart already down 20 bucks.
