The other day I went for a walk through the town. I was sitting on a rock by the beach when a man came up to me and asked for the time.

He was in his forties and probably hadn’t shaved for a couple of weeks. He had a bike and a week-old newspaper. I gave him the time - 12:31 - and he sat down next to me.

Now, I don’t like strangers. I’m not good at sustaining conversation with those I don’t know. But this guy just wouldn’t stop talking, so I didn’t have to do much.

The man talked about how he had switched to Islam a few years ago and how he had been learning Arabic ever since. He then spent 20 minutes talking about some revelations he’d supposedly had. He said that his revelations inspired him to create a new religion.

He then brought up a supposedly common word from Islam: Alms. He asked me if I knew what it meant. I said “money”. He started talking about the phrase “alms for the poor” and how monks would walk around saying it a long time ago.

He asked the time again. I said it was 1, and it was. He said that he had to go, and then brought up “alms for the poor” again. It then hit me: This guy was just looking for cash. I said that I didn’t have any money (I did, but it was my emergency cash). He looked down and said that something was falling out of my pocket. I looked - it was my wallet. It definitely wasn’t that dislodged a few minutes prior. Had this guy robbed me?

He took off after I had taken my wallet out of my pocket. I looked, and I had five dollars less than what I thought I had. This guy had spent a half an hour talking to me just so that he could swipe a few dollars off me.

I had a few more hours to burn, so I continued my walk, albeit much more cautiously. I had just been robbed, and I wasn’t about to let anything else happen to me.

I guess the lesson I learned is this: Keep your wallet on you, but don’t let any part of it show, or else somebody might rob you. I’ve lived in a small town all my life, and so I hadn’t experienced something like that. I was just some naive country girl without a clue as to the lengths people go to for some change.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 16th, 2008 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are closed. Deal with it.