April 8, 1983
One’s born but one dies …
The thing that struck me most about him was his acute discomfort.
He approached the door of the newspaper office timidly, walked in and stood on the threshold as if uncertain about the kinds of creatures he would face inside.
He wore regular work clothes. There was nothing extraordinarily distinguishing about him. He just looked nervous and uncomfortable.
He’d never done anything like this in his life, he told me as he timidly neared my desk.
He didn’t even know how to go about it … but if I would just bear with him, maybe he could get his story out.
He was just so embarrassed.
He was a driver for the Arnold Baking Company, he said. His truck had broken down up the highway, filled with his day’s delivery of breadstuffs. He’d gladly give our office staff a few loaves for our favorite bread if only someone could lend him eight dollars to catch a bus back to his company to get a substitute truck.
Oh, this was just so embarrassing.
Seeing what might have been a slightly skeptical look on my face, he produced a wad of credit and identification cards. One in particular, an Arnold I.D. card, has his picture on it. He was who he said he was. And he really did need help.
H stood there looking woebegone while I pondered whether or not to help my fellow man in distress and overjoyed when I pulled out my wallet, scrounged out the eight bucks and handed it to him.
He was so grateful.
After all, this had been so embarrassing.
He scurried out the door, promising English muffins as a thank-you when he returned before our office closed at five.
I never saw him again.
In fact, when I called the Arnol Company the next day to inquire about their poor driver with all the truck trouble I found they had never heard of him.
Indeed, someone from Arnold’s called back to warn me that this same man had pulled the same scam on someone in Cherry Hill … the same story … the same ID cards … the same eight bucks.
Everyone ribbed me about being too trusting.
I got kind advice from the Berlin Police Department clerk when I reported the flim-flam so others could be alerted to the perpetrators’ method.
But no one taught me as valuable a lesson as the con artist himself.
And. Thanks to him, someday, some person who is really in need to will find a deaf ear when he or she approaches me for help. At least when it comes to money, anyway.
That’s really very sad.
We were brought up to believe in the virtue of helping one’s neighbor. One of the greatest commandments given by the Almighty involves the way we should treat our fellow man.
Just try it.
After the incident, I pondered what is was about the whole thing that really stuck in my craw. Was it the money? Or was it the lie? … the deceit … the con?
It really wasn’t the money.
Had the guy come into the office, poured out his heart about being out of work, with sick kids and nowhere else to turn, I probably would have given him the money to help out. At least day before yesterday I might have.
It was the lie … the deliberate resort to fraud to weasel me out of money that is as important to me as to him that really angers me.
It’s probably true that there’s a sucker born every minute.
But yesterday, one sucker died.
And a wiser, more cynical person emerged.
There’s the pity of it all.
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