Back when I was a kid no one asked for money without some pretense. You needed a back story, like I lost my wallet and I don’t have enough money for the bus. My very favorite was the ‘deaf’ guy. These guys would hand out business sized cards with the letters of the alphabet translated into picture graphs of signing hands. Presumably to communicate with a deaf person. Anyway we’re kids, so the guy hands me the card and my brother standing behind him screams as loud as he can, ‘ are you really deaf’. I just ran away.

I enjoy your stories, they have a lightness and a penetrating awareness of this experiment we call life. You have a gift, use it wisely.