On Saturday morning, I got a knock on my door. I opened it up to be greeted by a smiley face and a set of waving hands. It was early, I was tired and it took me a little longer than it should have to realise he was deaf.
He had a little card prepared. It said that he was trying to raise money to go to a special deaf school and so he was going around selling his drawings. I thought - well that's a nice idea, let's hope he's not really shit so I don't have to embarrass both of us by pretending to be impressed by his crappy drawings.
He showed me his drawings, all pencil renderings, and they were technically pretty good, if a little bland, but then I guess the door-to-door market probably gravitates towards bland so they were likely perfect for the target market. Seemed like a nice guy and a worthy cause and I thought it's always a good idea to support another artist.
So I bought one.
It was a while later when I actually really looked at the drawing. Yeah, it was a pencil drawing alright - I knew that from the familiar shiny marks on my fingers. But, hang on. There was more to it than that. There was a printed drawing underneath. He had just drawn over a printed drawing, just enough so that the surface looks like a genuine pencil rendering. I don't even know that the print-out came from one of his drawings or some picture he pulled from the 'net. What a scam.
Who knows how deep the scam went. Maybe there is no special school. Maybe he was just looking for cash to feed his heroin habit. Who knows...
Scammed by a deaf guy. It's just not right.
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6 comments:
He probably wasn't really deaf either, but you know that now, right?
Maybe he wasn't even deaf. Hope you didn't spend too much money on his "drawing".
I'm going to start doing this.
LOL Those guys abound in Mexico city's subway. Only they don't pretend to be artists or anything, they just sell cheap keychains or greeting cards.
Living on a city like this makes your heart turn into stone pretty quickly. The only people I give money to are old beggars. I have a policy of not giving money to children because a)they are begging money for some pimp, almost always their own parents, and b)I don't want them to grow thinking they are entitled to receiving money for doing nothing.
However, there was this time I did break my own rule; but it was because it was 10 pm of a really freezing December night, and this poor girl was begging without any sweater and coughing repeatedly. I remember sitting on my car watching her, and in that same instant I turned my head to look to the driver next to me, who also turned to face me at the same time; after a moment of silence we both reached for our pockets in perfect synchronicity, without saying anything.
Your intention was good. And that is what counts the most.
One time, in Washington D.C., I got sold a useless map by a crackhead claiming to be collecting for some homeless advocacy organization. I gave him $3...and I guess I can say, if nothing else, that I'm glad to have contributed to his probable purchase of bottom-shelf liquor, and chips. I hope he enjoyed them.
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