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.
7 comments:
Ive done that too before.. given money to someone who you're not quite sure about. I think its better though to think the best and at least you'll get brownie points on judgment day right?
I never give anyone money that asks for it like that. it may not be nice but I figure I give a generous fast offering to make up the difference. you are a lot nicer than I am. ;) plus I never carry any cash anyway!
There have been some iffy times for me too. Once we found a couple sitting in their car in the temple parking lot. They said they were from Rexburg and had been trying to get to Blackfoot but they ran out of money and their bishop was supposed to come give them some money but they had been waiting all day. (We were leaving the temple after the last session.) Their tale was pretty fishy, but we told them we would go get them some gas in our 1 gallon can and they had some dippy reason why that wouldn't work, so rather sharply I said "Why wouldn't it work? Blackfoot is 20 miles away. You probably get more than that per gallon in this little car. Why won't it work?" So we went and got the gas and then they left. Weird. Makes me wonder if they had been panhandling folks all day as they came out of the temple feeling all charitable.
Wow, that was a truly random day! Some people really make you wonder, don't they?
I hate being approached in parking lots. It's too weird. Just stand on the side of the road and I'll help if I can :)
I think I would've run that guy down --with my feet...gheez, what kind of person do you think I am? :)--and asked for my money back!!
Although, Heather probably has the better way to handle this!
That was nice of you to help out. I get so skeptical. I am glad you were not hurt or anything.
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