"John Grazul"  <GRAZUL@biology.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>At Inner harbor a shelter woman wanted to wash our windows for money
>so that she could buy her kids food....we emptied our cabinets for
>her!  She got apples,  oranges,  corn flakes,  some chips,  cheese,
>and five juice containers...later we found most of the food in the
>garbage,  maybe the food wasn't fresh enough?

Nah, that wasn't it.  It was that the food didn't have a high enough
nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine content.  If you had given her new,
improved NicAlCoke Twinkies, she would have been perfectly happy.

BTW, you forgot to mention that you later found out she didn't have
any kids, either.

I ran into one couple that always asked for people to buy them
diapers.  I'm sure they threw away a few diapers, but enough people
probably just handed them cash and told them to buy their own.  How
did I know they were lying?  Every time I encountered them, 3-4 times
over about a year and a half period, they claimed they had a 3-month
old daughter.  Hmmm....

Another time a guy was asking me for money for food, I happened to be
right outside a deli.  I told him I wouldn't give him money, but I'd
buy him whatever food he wanted.  He picked out a pack of HoHo's and a
coke (boy, really hungry!), then pleaded with me for the change so he
could get a pack of cigarettes.

Oh yeah, all that was in Philly, just for reference.

-Rodney