It was a play date with some neighbors and lots of kids at a park. There were about 10 kids in our group and 6 parents. About 20 minutes into the play date a young tween girl came up and started talking to me. She was sweet, but her conversation quickly turned into a canned speech that I felt she had given countless times previously.
She said that her mother was too busy working to make lunch, one of her three brothers ate her breakfast and that her youngest brother was going into the hospital the next morning for surgery. That last tidbit was mentioned to emphasize that they had to wake up early the next morning, so she wouldn’t have breakfast that day either.
She never came out and asked for food, but said, “I sure am hungry”, commented about the heat that day and said that her throat was parched. She was waiting for me to offer up the food. Was it a hidden camera video performance to test how giving a stranger would be to a tween girl? Maybe the girl was really hungry?
Before I could dig into the story any further I had to go chase down a certain three year old who was trying to escape the park’s boundaries.
When I came back the young girl was giving the exact same story to my neighbor. It was word for word the same story so I interjected and filled in the blanks for my friend. She shot me a glance of ‘how did you know that story’?, but before she could comment on it she had to chase down her two year old who was doing what our child just did.
She came back, but the tween had walked down the park. “Don’t feed the pigeons”, I said to my neighbor. We both agreed that her story sounded too precise and rehearsed. There were things in there that an 11 year old does not say in common conversation.
By then some of the other parents noticed the girl and we filled them in on what was happening. They didn’t have a problem with giving her some food and since they brought the majority of it. And then, as if on cue the girl walked up to me and asked if she could have some food.
Here’s the thing. I knew anything about this girl. Did she have allergies, did her parents know where she was-nothing. I told her that because I knew nothing about her allergies, she couldn’t get any food unless her parents said it was OK. She immediately said that her father was playing soccer in the field next to us and she could ask him.
Well, now I think you’re just a grifter. It is a remote possibility that you’re legitimately hungry with a family that can’t feed you. However, I suspect that you’re just seeking attention and this is a personality you’ve created.
She came bounding back about five minutes later and said that her father said that she had ‘no allergies’. I know that there are hungry and homeless people in the suburbs. There are certainly fewer of them than in the city, but they are there. When I lived in the city I would give my leftover meals to them when I walked back home.
However, this was a difference scene. It’s a world full of food allergies and kids who can’t eat this or that die just by eating a nut or touching mayonnaise. Or was I just telling myself that to immediately avoid giving her food? She was just a kid who said that she was hungry, why not give her a hot dog, chips and a cookie or two?
For a while I was a grifter as a teen. Sherwood Pool was the pool that my family wasn’t a member to. We were a member to a pool in Greensboro, just not that one. One summer I tried almost daily to sneak in there. A couple of times I succeed, but more often than not I got scared and didn’t try. The last time that I tried to sneak in one of the lifeguards confronted me, told me that sneaking into places was wrong, getting things for free wasn’t the stuff of good character and a couple other choice adjectives.
Was their talk to me old-fashioned or something that I deserved?
For me it was the later. I still remember that moment and had the grifter at the park been older, a talk similar to the one that I received would’ve been given to her.
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