![['Concerns have been raised about panhandlers on the median at busy St. John’s intersections.']](https://saltwire.imgix.net/panhandling-2746952.jpg?cs=srgb&fit=crop&h=568&w=847&dpr=1&auto=enhance%2Cformat%2Ccompress)
It was payday and I had just come out of the bank and was standing on the sidewalk examining the pathetic numbers printed in my bankbook, when she walked up to me and said, “Excuse me, can I talk to you for a moment? It’s a bit embarrassing…”
As with every payday, I was going to be flush with cash for the next three days, and feel as rich as any current or former premier of the province, so her timing was impeccable.
“My car is parked just over there, but it’s out of gas. The needle is on E and I don’t have any money. There’s no one that I can call, and I can’t get home,” she said.
She was an adorable little old lady, well dressed and with a lovely smile, and I knew at “Excuse me” that she was lying.
Apparently, she had driven into town from such-and-such, and didn’t have any family in St. John’s.
I may have been born almost yesterday in Alberta, but I’ve been in Newfoundland long enough to know her accent wasn’t from such-and-such.
I asked if she had a debit card or credit card. No, she said, she has neither, because she receives only a small pension.
“And you came into town without any money?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly, as if that answer made sense.
There are at least two things you should have learned by now, I thought: don’t leave home without money, and don’t lie.
It briefly crossed my mind to offer to drive with her to a gas station and put gas in her car for her, because it would be interesting to see how she dodged that suggestion.
But my curiosity about that was fleeting. I wondered what her real situation was. Perhaps she and her aging husband, if she had one, spent their monthly pensions and couldn’t pay their power bill.
In which case, I wish she had just said, “Excuse me, my house is cold and I need money. Can you give me some?”
But, despite what parents, teachers and policemen habitually tell the young, honesty isn’t always the best policy.
I handed her a bill and said, “Here, this will get you home.”
She smiled ecstatically, a tad triumphantly, and thanked me in a polite, happy tone. I’d just been suckered, and I knew it. It didn’t matter. She was the cutest con artist I’d ever come across.
When someone asks you for money, you have to make an instant judgment. Do they really need it? Are they lying? Are they “worthy” — i.e., the common canard of whether they will just go buy booze.
The empty gas tank story is probably one of the dozens of scams the RNC and RCMP occasionally warn the public about. If so, it’s a relatively minor one. Of course, there would have been more serious implications if the sweet little old lady had claimed to be a Nigerian prince.
There are two reasons to dislike being approached by panhandlers.
The first is if you have a shrivelled heart devoid of kindness or generosity.
The second is if you don’t like being put in a position where you have to judge people.
When someone asks you for money, you have to make an instant judgment. Do they really need it? Are they lying? Are they “worthy” — i.e., the common canard of whether they will just go buy booze.
The feeling that you’ve been suckered isn’t as bad, though, as realizing you made a wrong judgment.
Years ago, about 1993, I was walking home from work through downtown Calgary on an extremely cold, grey winter day when a meek voice asked me for money. She was about 16, shivering in a light coat, sheltered from the wind in the doorway of a skyscraper.
I was in a bad mood, and passed her by without saying anything. A quarter-century later, I still regret not giving money to her.
She was a runaway from Saskatchewan, and she was hungry. I know this because my wife encountered her shortly after I did, and stopped to talk to her, and then went across the street to a fast-food joint and bought her a hamburger.
Brian Jones is a desk editor at The Telegram. He can be reached at [email protected].
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