Twenty Dollars
When I got off the bus in downtown Seattle, a Pan-handler asked me for a quarter. Apparently he hasn’t heard of inflation. I politely told him I did not have a quarter — or any change for that matter. He wasn’t disturbed in the least, he smiled. I thought about that for a second, and then I said, “let me see if I have a dollar.” He smiled again, apparently that pleased him. I pulled out my wallet and the debit cart flew out onto the sidewalk. I didn’t want to give him that, so I picked it up and put it back in my wallet. While I had it open, I thumbed through the bills. There weren’t many bills, 2 fives and 2 twenties. I smiled at him and told him all I had were twenties (a slight exaggeration, but, under the circumstances, probably reasonable.) He smiled a genuine smile at me, engaging beyond what I would reasonably have expected, he then said, “I hope the next time we meet all you have are 100’s!” We looked at each other with something like understanding. I told him he was a very funny man. We parted, ever so slightly more like friends than strangers.
It occurs to me as I write this, I should have just given him one of the fucking twenty dollar bills. We made a connection. We are both humans. There can’t really be an argument against that, can there?
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