This morning, as I was getting into my car at Stop & Shop, this rather disheveled looking guy called out to me. As I stopped, car door open, he rode up to my car on his bike. “Would you have any interest in a soft top Eddie Bauer cooler?” he asked, unhooking the item from his bike and trying to hand it over to me.

I have to confess, I hate being approached about things like this. My immediate reaction is to run away. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it seems to be uniquely reserved for people asking for donations or trying to sell me stuff. Especially the latter. I have an especial hatred right now for the sales people they allow to infest Best Buy, trying to get you to change your internet provider to that shitty DirectTV. Sales people should be there to assist you, not try to upsell you anything. Every time I get approached I start to go off, so much that Corb has to literally push me away before I say anything too obnoxious. I know, they are only doing their job. I am not angry at them, I am angry at Best Buy for allowing them to do it. Which is why, incidentally, I am currently boycotting Best Buy.

Anyway, I digress. The minute he asked this, I did what I always do. I moved away. “No, thank you,” I said, quietly and politely, but still, in a way that was firm, with my head lowered. I immediately started to close my car door.

“You sure?” he asked, moving his soft top Eddie Bauer cooler back to behind his bike.

“No thank you” I repeated in the same tone and closed the door.

He left. I drove off. But still, this image lingered in my head. Him, on his bike. I think it was the way he said “soft top Eddie Bauer cooler” that bothered me. It had been so precise, so rehearsed.

Why was he approaching me about this? Was it perfectly innocent? Was he indeed just looking to give me, out of the kindness of his heart, a soft top Eddie Bauer cooler? Why would he be doing something like that? Was it some kind of homeless thing, like the people who stand outside of malls with increasing frequency these days, looking for a donation? (I am positive that is staged, by the way, and that’s not without precedent. Back in the 1800s, the poor and indigent were put to work shoveling horse crap off the streets, until they protested the demeaning work. Look it up, it’s true.) What was his story?

And what is it about me that shut down the way I did? Slam. Walls come down. Why am I like that? Would it kill me to keep a five or something in my wallet, for situations like that, instead of my George Castanza-like wallet spilling to the brim with receipts and plastic and nothing else? Isn’t there something I can do to be better than I am?

Anyway, I just made a donation of $20 to my favorite homeless shelter, Crossroads of Rhode Island. It surely will not make me a better person or help me on the path to the countless hours of therapy that I so clearly need. But, maybe it will help someone in some small way. And maybe, it’s a reminder to stop and think..and aspire higher.