Yesterday, I was at Penn Station to catch a train. A woman with dark curly hair stopped me as I headed toward the ticket machines: "Can I ask you something? I would ask someone else but you don't look scary and you also look about my age."
I bet she uses the same line on everyone.
"I need to catch a bus to [a city in upstate New York whose name I now forget]. The ticket is $47 and I've gotten about $20 so far. Could you spare some money so I can get home?"
She may have also mentioned why she had no way to withdraw cash from an ATM, but I don't recall, because she spoke very quickly. I looked at her hands and saw a bus schedule and some one- or five-dollar bills. Also, I looked at her face, and although she was wrong about looking my age, she did look sincere. I gave her a $10 bill and wished her good luck getting home.
When I lived in New Brunswick, NJ, I'd often get stopped by men at the train station who claimed that they needed just a few more dollars to buy a ticket to Asbury Park, could I spare some? When I offered to buy the ticket for them outright, however, they refused. One guy made the mistake of approaching me twice in one week with the same sob story (he'd apparently lost his wallet). I gave him a look that would have made my mother disown me.
But something about Miss Curly in Penn Station made me feel some compassion. I'm not the greatest judge of character, though, so I may never know for sure if my $10 went toward that bus ticket. But I don't really care. What would you have done?
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2 comments:
That offer to buy them the ticket is a good way to give/test. That would've been a better way to handle the set-up I encountered in CT one time. But as to Miss Curly, I guess every new occasion feels like a redux, so "Fool me once....", and all that.
I'd have walked away.
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