MAGIC         PORK

This happened over the summer, but I was just remembering it today while walking back from Spot Coffee and thought I would share it with you all.

It was a bright Sunday, late-morning, and I was walking down the sidewalk towards my apartment with a cup of coffee from Spot (over on East Ave). As I get towards my cross-street, I see this chubby little blonde girl, I’d guess 11 years old, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. She walks up to the newspaper box and starts putting money in. As I start to pass her, she turns around and says “Can you help me?” She sounds really upset. She’s hitting the change return thing and taking back her quarter.

I figure she’s having problems getting the money into the thing and seems like a bit of an overreaction but whatever. I’m not very good with kids by the way. I say “sure”. She says “Someone’s chasing me.” Immediately my scepticism kicks in. It’s not unheard of for people to involve their kids in a scam. There’s one guy that my friends encountered more than once that would have his wife and kid with him and say their car broke down and they need gas money. But this girl did look really upset. She’s practically sobbing, short of breath and looks really scared. So I say “what do you mean someone’s chasing you?” and I make sure my voice sounds like I don’t quite believe her. Maybe if she was making it up she’d crack under the pressure!! Hey, I watch The Shield. I know how to get people to confess! (Although I’m more like Dutch than Vic Mackey. Nevermind if you don’t watch it.)

She says a man is chasing her. I ask where he is. She says she was walking across a parking lot and he started following her. (I make a mental note of how he’s now “following” her instead of “chasing” her.) I ask what he looks like. He’s wearing a red jacket. That’s all the detail she gave.

Then she says that she’s scared and I say “alright, don’t worry. He won’t hurt you if I’m standing here.” Then I ask her “why are you getting a newspaper?” She says her mom sent her to get a newspaper. I’m thinking if someone’s chasing me I’m not going to stop to get a newspaper and when I saw her walk up to the thing she didn’t seem in a hurry. But then again, kids sometimes worry about weird things and maybe she was afraid her mom would be mad if she didn’t return with a paper. Or maybe her mom really would be mad, maybe she has abusive parents.

So then she says “can you walk with me?” I said okay. She starts walking away without getting the newspaper. Hmm, why not get the newspaper if it’s so important. I figure she must live on this side street. We turn the corner (my building is on the corner) and she starts crossing the street. I’m looking down the street feeling way uncomfortable. This block seems a lot longer than it had in my memory. My brain is now filing this situation into the Not Good category. I’m a 30 year old guy starting to walk down a deserted street with a little girl that I just met on the corner. Anyone looking out their window would be dialing 911 right about now. On top of that, I was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and dark sunglasses. Didn’t think about that until later!

I realize she never said she lived on this street, I was just assuming. So I ask her “where’s your house?” She mentions some street I don’t know. I ask where that is and she motions across this empty lot that she’s walking towards and says you cut through there. I look and on the other side of the lot is some trees and brush and I don’t know what’s beyond that. I stop and say “whoa, I can’t walk that far with you. Do you want me to call the police?”

She immediately shakes her head and says “no! It’s okay”. She seems to be sobbing a little less now too. I say “are you sure?” I pull out my cell phone. She says she thinks she’ll be all right from here. I say I’ll watch from here and I watch her walk across the lot. When she gets to the other side she looks back at me then walks out of eyesight.

Now the curiosity was killing me. I’m pretty sure at this point she was feeding me some b.s. story. But what was the scam going to be? How was she or her family going to get money from me? Was she just trying to play on my sympathy and going to ask me for money at some point? Was there going to be some big guy on the other side of that lot demanding to know what I was doing with his daughter and threatening to call the cops if I didn’t give him some money? Maybe it wasn’t even that sophisticated and some dude was just going to beat the crap out of me and take my wallet once I was led into some secluded area. And of course there’s still the possibility that she was telling the truth, she certainly was a good actress if she was lying, and I was hoping I wouldn’t see something in the news the next day about a girl getting murdered. It was definitely suspicious how quickly she changed her tune when police were mentioned - but she’s a kid, maybe she was just nervous that cops meant she’d be in trouble for something. Maybe. But I don’t think so. I should have called the cops anyway. Either way, she’s a girl walking by herself when she said someone was following her, or she’s part of a scam. But I didn’t.

A month or two later, I saw her walking across that same lot but with some lady with dark hair. Maybe her mom? Maybe someone she was pulling a scam on? I don’t know but at least she’s not dead. If anyone encounters this girl giving a sob story to them, let me know because I’d really like to know what the deal is. I’m hoping some day she tries that on me again so I know for sure she’s a liar and I can tell her off!  Vic Mackey style!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 26th, 2006 at 3:56 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.