Frogshake

This morning as early as 11:30AM (yes, to me that’s still part of the fairly early morning) the doorbell rang. The mail had already been delivered, I wasn’t expecting any guests and I doubt I had won something so big, it had to be delivered - plus I don’t do raffles). Perhaps a couple of Jehova’s Witnesses. Crap, I knew talking to them two or three times - during which I repeatedly told them that they’d never make me sign up for their club, no matter what - would come back and bite me in the ass. So I crawled on top of my desk and hugged the window to check if it was them standing downstairs at the front door. To my surprise they were not, but a very impressive impression of my face did on the window. There can’t possibly be anything worse than a couple of religious nutbars at 11:30 in the morning so I tromped to the door, afraid my paranoia just screwed me out of a multibillion dollar win. Boy, was I wrong about both.

I cheerily opened the door, already prepared to act all surprised when a hot woman in a bikini would give me a suitcase full of money, and there he was: a harbinger of feel-bad, luckily not wearing a bathing suit. It was a man, relatively short, bearded, not particularly clean and wearing socks in sandals (some people just don’t have any sense of fashion). He had already started to walk away, but when I opened the door readily scampered back. A little perplexed I stammered “Hey, what’s up?” and he said “Hello!” and shoved a picture of some sad-looking kid, along with his ID in my face. The text under the sad-looking boy’s face read (in several languages - how handy!) “Please help me and give me some money so my son can have that life-saving operation he so desperately needs!” Or something. His ID identified him as a citizen of Romania. I politely refused to give him all my life savings and with a “Ok!” he walked off to nag the neighbors. I felt bad at first. Maybe his son really needed this operation! Am I a bad person?

I learned later that apparently a couple of young boys needed very expensive and life-saving operations lately, as several men had been roaming the neighborhood, asking people for money. Ah, good, I lucked out this time, no harm done, it was only a scam, this is a good day for my karma. Still, I think I should donate some money to people who really need it - just in case.