I was waiting at a bus stop recently when I reached for my wallet to pull out some money. I have a fairly extensive track record of dropping loads of coins everywhere when I do this and this event continued this great tradition resulting in the spilling of a one dollar coin and a fifty cent piece. The one dollar coin was reasonably well behaved and landed within ten centimetres of my feet; the fifty cent piece — being the annoying dodecahedral menace that it is — absconded onto the road.
Picking up the one dollar coin was a no-brainer; hey it’s a buck. Now over the years I’ve managed, somehow, to develop a reasonably well honed risk-reward brain function. There was fifty cents a fair way toward the centre of a very busy Elizabeth street with large, heavy buses constantly passing by amongst a multitude of smaller but just as deadly cars. I decided it was best to forfeit it and I was quite proud of this decision!
Not more than five seconds after arriving at this very sensible course of inaction an elderly lady beside me hobbled over onto the road and expended a great deal of effort to bend over and retrieve the silver specie. Bless! I thought to myself. What a nice lady — of course I’ll let her keep it when she offers. Except that she didn’t. She pocketed the treasure and with nary a sideways glance resumed her position next to me, not more than two arm lengths away. Flabbergasted is probably an accurate description.
That was the second time within a fortnight that I had been swindled by a woman, although the previous incident was far more costly and, in turn, far more embarrassing. And no, you won’t get that one out of me 🙂
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