The most amazing con-woman I have ever met was 80 years old.
My friend and I encountered her during a two-block trip between my friend’s apartment and the convenience store. It was a Sunday morning, and while the streets were filled with people and noise, the screech of the old woman’s voice caught my friend’s attention.
“Can someone help me?” she shouted.
“What do you need? Are you alright?” my friend replied.
The woman looked like she weighed 90 pounds, and her veins popped out of her arms like blue-hued worms. At first glance, she looked homeless, but we learned very quickly that she lived inside the building that she was perched in front of.
Satisfied with the attention she had just received from my friend, she pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and began to speak.
“I need you to go into that restaurant and order me this meal,” she began. “And make sure there’s no butter or sauce on the fish.”
This was the point at which my friend and I grew increasingly confused. First, this restaurant was about two blocks away; why couldn’t she just walk there?
I looked at my friend. “Shouldn’t have stopped,” I said. “Bad move.”
But the problem was, we had stopped, and now were stuck with a rambling old woman, a piece of paper, and a request for a meal.
I suggested we just leave, but my friend felt bad for the woman and decided that the best decision would be to buy the meal. We told the woman that we would be back in about 15 minutes, and she told us that if she wasn’t there when we returned to put the food inside the door.
Despite my every attempt to persuade my friend otherwise, we did come back 15 minutes later, food in hand, and made the delivery.
This was the point where it got strange. The woman took the food from my friend’s hand and handed her a dollar bill in exchange for her troubles. A dollar for a $13 meal? Wait… what?
Obviously, this woman understood that in America money is often exchanged for goods or services, so why did she just expect my friend to pick up the tab for her meal?
We left her house awestruck. My friend decided that the event would give her good Karma, but I left ranting bitterly about the absurdity of the old woman, which is when I began to think: When did I get so bitter?
There were obviously two ways in which an individual could have dealt with that woman: leave and continue on with her day or buy the woman the meal. I wanted to leave.
I wanted to leave an old woman, who could have been starving on the street, because I saw her as a scam artist. But my friend saw her as a grandmother, or someone who needed a little bit of help on that particular day.
So, basically, I’m the epitome of cynicism. But I don’t think I’m alone. Actually, I think it’s more common than we even know. Our generation is exceedingly cynical, but why?
Many of the people I know grew up in upper-middle class America, living in suburban homes, with mowed lawns and two dogs. Life hasn’t been hard, and for some reason, we’re bitter that our lives have been so easy.
It’s a trend that’s apparent in all the media we’re creating. Films about disgruntled youth, and television shows based around the corruption of suburbia. Even shows such as The Real World depict kids our own age, complaining about absolutely nothing.
We’re constantly talking about futures, with high expectations that we’re very willing to let fall by the wayside, based solely on the fact that maybe our futures will disappoint.
We come from a generation for which following our parents, and achieving the same level of success, can seem difficult. Maybe the expectations are too high. And, maybe these expectations make us cynical. Or maybe, there’s just too many old women waiting on the streets to prove us right, to solidify the fact that the world is out to get us, that nothing is as perfect as we’d like it to be, so we may as well be prepared.
Or maybe, I’m just too cynical, and instead I should lay in the grass and enjoy the sunshine. But, truth be told, grass really irritates my allergies.
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