Baby Face

I was walking Jamie's tupperware back to her this afternoon, and I took Henry with me. It was a bit too long of a walk for the little critter (2 1/2 miles...) but I think he did pretty good. (I did wind up having to carry him for 4 blocks because he looked like he was really thirsty. But then he does have a really long tongue.)

After leaing Jamie's container at her door, Henry and I headed down College Ave.

I heard "Hey, hey, hey" and saw some frantic waving directed to me from a guy over by one of the shady apartment buildings. I figured he was lost, needed help, or something. Not sure what else to do, I stopped and took my iPod headphones out of my ears. "Yeah?" I asked. (Henry siezed the opportunity to flop, since he was so terribly tired.)

The guy intoduced himself as "from the 'hood in Minneapolis; yo, I'm not even from your state" (that was reassuring right off the bat) and proceeded to explain that he was "in need of 25 credits" (of what?!, I wanted to ask) and would I please buy some magazines from him. Sorry, that was a really long sentence.

Scanning the list of magazines he proffered I noticed the "company" he worked for couldn't correctly spell their own name ("Movemeant"), and 80% of the magazines were inappropriate. For $20 a month I too could receive such trash in my mailbox every month.

I remembered an email I received two days ago from a lady at work saying there were some college kids going around our town scamming people by selling magainzes for college, Hurricane Katrina.

Or to "earn credits", I assumed.

Quite rudely, the guy asked me how old I was. I was kind of shocked at his audacity but I stuttered out "24..." to which he responded, "Aww, girl, you have such a cute baby face. I thought you was younger", or some variant thereof. (He couldn't have been more than 19 or 20 himself, and he did not have a "cute baby face".)

He continued addressing me in an increasingly flirtatious matter, and I was trying in vain to figure out how to extricate myself from this vortex of a guy. He was making me really, really nervous.

Finally I muttered something about "we're on a tight budget" and started dragging Henry away. The guy limp-fish shook my hand (I checked it over thoughly for any homing devices he may have stuck to me) and I made my furtive exit.

Honestly.