Big money my a**

“Hey Big Money,” the aging black man said to me outside the store. “How ’bout a quarter?”

“I don’t know five people with a nickle” I replied, wondering what in the hell he wanted with a quarter. Why didn’t he ask for a dollar? Or $2,500, like a dude in a wheelchair asked me for, in jest no doubt, outside a Houston convenience store awhile back.

People are always coming up to me asking me for money. Usually it’s the same story: “I am from out-of-town/Houston/Louisiana and I need just a dollar or two to buy some gas so I can get to wherever.”

Look, I realize these are hard times but the outside the grocery store or convenience ambush wears a little thin sometimes.

Also, why is it that I look like I would have any money? I drive a 12-year-old Toyota Tacoma with a few bruises and scratches and a cracked windshield, luckily, trending toward the passenger side from the middle. I say luckily because it doesn’t require replacement to get an inspection sticker each year.

I don’t know, maybe I am just a walking liberal. Maybe it’s the cheap clothes I wear. If I drove a late model Beemer or a BMW or Caddy and was wearing nice threads perhaps people would be reluctant to hit me up because they figure that the reason I have money is that I don’t give it away to pan-handlers. ¿Comprende?

Look, I know some people need help. But some want to squander what they have on some crack or some meth or some Christ in a Can, preferably 40-ounce.

I don’t carry a lot of cash on me, as in hardly any. If I carry any cash it usually for an emergency or to buy something with the exact change.

It isn’t that I am a tightwad. It’s just I don’t have a whole lot of money, the why of which isn’t important in this context.

Maybe it’s that I have a kind face that people want to bum money off me. Yes, a kind face. I don’t know what kind.