I can’t hear you
Edited: now with picture!
While walking down past the bus station yesterday I once again was accosted by this guy I see all the time. Before I even get to the actual point of this story, I must ask: why do people walk up to people who are OBVIOUSLY wearing iPod headphones and start talking to them? I mean, just start talking away and not take any notice whatsoever of the fact that this person has effectively blocked their ears to normal conversation? Do they not understand what headphones are? Do they think those little white (or blue, in my case) wire things hanging out from someone’s head are part of their natural body? I can see someone saying, ‘Hey, sorry, can I ask you something?” and then going on, but not to just starting talking as if there is no impediment to an immediate two-way conversation right in front of their face. It’s like walking up to a blind person with a guide dog and asking if he can help you out with directions and here is the map, can you tell me how to get to this street right here?
Anyway, this guy walks up to me, me with my obvious “don’t talk to me unless it’s important” headphones on and asks for money. I know; you are wondering how I know he was asking for money when I just said I can’t hear people who walk up to me when I’m listening to music. Well I know he was asking for money because this same guy has asked me for money about 100 times in the past year. It’s always the same story: “I just need two dollars to get the bus back to Manchester and someone stole my wallet, can you help me out?”
So. One, I know he cannot have been robbed 99 times up to yesterday and yet still hasn’t figured out that he ought to solve this problem by keeping his money in his pants. And second, *I* easily recognize this guy by this point. We’re practically old friends with all the times he’s come up to me. So WHY DOESN’T HE RECOGNIZE ME??? I don’t get it. Does he not have any memory of our previous encounters? Or does he, and he thinks *I* don’t remember him and his previous dozens of attempts to scam-sob-story money out of me? Aside from the fact that he ought to know me
upside down and backwards by this time, the fact is, I have more than two feet of very noticeable red hair hanging out of my head. Very long, very red, red hair. I can see forgetting what I look like but honestly it’s pretty hard to forget my hair. It’s really long and it’s really red, okay? It’s actually a detriment to remaining anonymous in a lot of situations. (Sometimes it definitely helps things out though, don’t get me wrong.) I mean I like it a lot and wouldn’t change it but it has its downsides if I want to just blend in. I don’t understand how this guy can either not remember it and me from the week before, or think I don’t remember him and so he can just try his same old tired line again. Maybe he thinks it’s going to work one day? Maybe I’ll suddenly realize this poor young man has been stranded in Boston for a year for want of two dollars to Manchester? And feel terrible about this and so give it to him?
I keep meaning to point out to him that he’s already asked me a hundred times and I’m not going to suddenly change my position on things, but I always forget until I’m already a few steps away. Maybe he also remembers right at that moment oh right it’s that redhead lady, I keep forgetting she always turns me down.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Do you also get the old new person that meets you and feels the need to tell something like “Wow, you have red hair”, as if you don’t already know and it’s their job to inform you?
Nice picture by the way. Wow, you have red hair.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:50 am
That light makes it look a tad more red than it is but that’s pretty close. The real all-over color is more like the little section on my left side up by my temple, which is slightly less on fire than the rest of the picture.
On the whole I’d rather be told “wow you have red hair” than “wow you sure got fat!” or “hey you look terrible, are you sick?”