Man, I’d rather be a sucker than assume everyone I met was trying to hustle me.
Stories like this are why I do what I do. There are a lot of people in the world who maybe can’t get around as well, or never were very organized, but they retain all their cognitive faculties and the last thing they’d want to do is go live in a nursing home.
It turns out I really enjoy being the person who values their garden as much as they do, or the person who helps them fix their roof. (Yup. Done it twice now) You know, maybe they don’t have kids, or their kids are far away. That’s okay; I am estranged from my parents, so it works out perfectly.
Sounds like that to me. Classic con. Tell him you’ll call social services and you’ll see he’s not as disabled as he wanted you to believe.
Mkay. The dude did not want anything from me. If he was angling for a hand-out, he was staggeringly ineffective at it, since nothing he said implied a lack of financial well-being.
Spice, for (mumble, mumble, mumble) reasons, my paycheck is a little late this month and if you send me $100 by paypall, I’ll pay you right back.
I was thinking the same thing at first, but, it’s kinda believable (provided you put a second hand filter on it)
I’m an RN. I have SEEN dudes like that.
[QUOTE=Ambivalid]
He doesn’t drive. I don’t know how he got to the store or anything else but he told us that he doesn’t drive.
[/QUOTE]
Speaking of driving, did you see that traffic coming into town?
That’s the way it works. He may not be looking for cash, he’s looking for you to take him home and take care of him.
How did he get there? Who carries an index card with a list of all their medical problems? You were talking to him right there but he says he can’t communicate by phone. He didn’t make you as a mark, and he kept on looking.
So maybe he was just a decrepit old man, in that case he needs to be told he’s acting like a grifter.
Hmm. I don’t think he was a beggar. I think he just wanted to complain.
There are people like this. They want to talk in great detail about why their lives suck, but they aren’t interested in taking advice about improving it. You notice whenever you offered a suggestion about what to do, he had an excuse about why that wouldn’t work in his case. And then he just went on with his list of horrors.
He wasn’t looking for help or money. He was looking for sympathy and pity. He wanted validation that he had the world’s worst problems, and wasn’t he brave just for still being alive?
Yes, he has a sad, sad life. And he likes it that way.
You know, in a weird way, he might have approached you because he felt competitive about you, not “safe” as you assumed in your post.
Think about it. If he could get a guy in a wheelchair to feel sorry for him, that’s the ultimate rush for a sympathy junkie.
This thread really brought out the cynics didn’t it. I think he is just a lonely old man who wants to communicate with another human being. Just needs some human contact. So do we all. As my friends retire and move away, not to mention die off, my wife and I have fewer and fewer people we have regular contact with. And when one of us shuffles off the coil, the other will really be bereft.
It is sad and the physical problems make it worse. In Canada, he would have been provided with an electric wheelchair (although not with a hearing aid :() and placed in a nursing home if it seemed necessary.
Here’s a very non-cynical reason he’d have an index card with his medical conditions. It communicates what EMT and ER people need to know just in case he’s can’t speak. It may also help him remember what to tell people just in case they ask him what medications he’s taking.
I don’t know why people are so suspicious. I see frail elderly people all the time, riding the bus, slowly making their way down the street. Some of them look like they’re in awesome shape, and some of them don’t. And quite frequently, some of them aren’t too timid to let him know. What kind of rainbows-and-lollipops world are ya’ll living in where this is so implausible?
Back when I was taking yoga, there was an old guy in my class who kvetched about his broken-down body all the time. Now, he did it in a humorous way and you could tell that despite his problems, he was still doing the damn thing. But sometimes it was sad to watch him struggle and try to be a good sport about it. Whenever I see him around town sometimes I feel that sadness.
If that happened to me I’d feel worst because I don’t know offhand and in simple terms what advice or contact to give such a person to get help from social services. That might not be an easy, quick or at all viable solution necessarily, but it’s something. I don’t think I could offer anything, except if being willing to listen helped in any way, which I applaud OP for doing. Giving money wouldn’t be a solution if the problem was as described, and not appropriate if it wasn’t being honestly described. Although I’m willing to accept OP’s first hand assessment that that wasn’t the guy’s intention anyway.
I’ve had loud tinnitus since I was 11 (didn’t even listen to loud music! No fair! :p) and I know that I rely on lip reading to supplement my hearing. I’m also nearsighted, so I’ve been known to say, “I can’t hear you, I don’t have my glasses on.”
This. Having worked at a senior center and done Meals on Wheels, and now cleaning houses for elderly, physically challenged folks all the time, I also don’t get why this would be considered so far out of the norm that they guy just had to be scamming. Lots of these types, in my experience, are still pretty proud individuals who don’t want a handout, but would love anyone to talk to. And unfortunately, since they’re typically alone, aren’t really up on their conversational skills, which is why they default to ailments and hardships. You know, the things that affect them daily.
Plus, if y’all don’t know anyone who kvetches and yet doesn’t take advice, you are one lucky creature and I’d like to shake your blue tentacle.
This is true in the US too; Medicare certainly pays for power chairs. It’s one of the reasons that his backstory is lacking for me.
But I wasn’t there, obviously, and I defer to Ambivalid’s perception of the situation. I’m not going to bust his chops for having faith in humanity.
I guess I am a bit surprised that so many people here are confident enough in their perspectives to ridicule even the possibility of an alternative.
One day Ambi will realize he met a time traveler, suffering from what we will one day call “time travel fever” from too many jumps. A stereotypic case, for what it’ll be worth.
Here’s another thought, and this one comes from my experience with a friend. He’s in his mid to late fifties, completely blind, lives alone in a ramshackle tenement, doesn’t drive and has a host of other medical problems to boot.
Yet, due to some sort of won’t-have-diagnosed mental issues, he won’t get any government assistance whatsoever. I’ve tried to get him help, as well as his best friend, but he denies that he needs it and turns it away left and right.
And trust me, if you end up next to him at the Dollar General he can still get to, he’d have no problem regaling you with any and all ailments, afflictions and bad circumstances. 
Sadly, he really is a sweet guy, just terribly proud. He’s been like that since his twenties and simply can’t wrap his mind around how life turned out this way. So, he bitches about it to all who’ll listen, but never in a million years would take anything from anyone.
In conclusion, perhaps there was something mental going on with that gentleman? I wouldn’t rule it out.
That can be interpreted two ways in this instance.
Yeah I got that. Sly. :rolleyes: