Georgetown/Tues Oct 5/1:05 pm
Officer Thaimin Saewong reports: “When I arrived at the Shell gas station at 600 South Michigan Street, I contacted the victim at the air/water machine on the east side of the station. He said he was fine and was not injured. He had stopped at the gas station to fill his tires with air. He said the unknown suspect came up to him and offered to help him fill his tires. The victim told the suspect that he didn’t need any assistance, but the suspect was very insistent on helping. He ultimately let the suspect fill a tire.
“The suspect then asked the victim for some money as payment for his assistance. The victim said he didn’t want to give the suspect any money, but thought he’d be nice. He pulled out his wallet and looked for a couple of dollar bills. He said while he had his wallet out, the suspect grabbed the wallet and pulled it toward him. He and the suspect then struggled for control of the wallet. The victim said he ultimately gave up trying to fight the suspect and told the suspect to go ahead and take the money but not the wallet or anything else. The suspect then took all the money (about $25) and fled northbound on a bicycle.”
We have all been in the victim’s position: minding our own business, enjoying some chore or task, when a stranger, someone out of the blue, offers us help. Clearly we do not need it, clearly we are not in distress or struggling in any way, clearly the helper is a beggar or up to no good. The exasperating situation presents two choices: You go tough and tell the stranger to fuck off or you let the stranger help and, once he is done, give him what he is certainly going to ask for—some money. The victim in this report made the wrong choice. Never be nice to a stranger who offers help you do not need.
i woulda’ shot him
“Proverbs” by Charles Mudede.
I already knew that; I didn’t need your advice. Fuck off, Chuck.
I once got a flat tire in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. I was 80% done with changing it (only had to tighten the lug nuts/lower the jack) when an older (in his 60s?) Mexican man pulled up, and seemed outraged that (1) I was changing the tire myself (the impression I got was a “women shouldn’t have to do that” one) and (2) no one had offered to help me.
I tried to tell him that it was okay, I was almost done, but he was insistent that he finish the job. It was actually kind of adorable how his machismo played out in this situation.
We chatted while he finished the change, I thanked him, and we both went on our way… So, being nice to strangers who offer unnecessary help? Not always a bad thing.
TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.
The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.
The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right–agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
-Robert Frost
It should always be a red flag when a person doesn’t hear you when you tell them no. It can be a sign that they are looking to control you, or that they have trouble with boundaries. Sometimes they are harmless, as Julie’s story shows, but it should make you wary nonetheless.