Note to self : What is RM17 to you?
Here is what happened:
I was sitting in the car with someone having a nice conversation. Suddenly a couple on a motorcycle drove past the passenger side of the car and stop just ahead of the car. The man (driver) got off the motorcycle and doubled back towards my car and tapped on the window. My friend rolled the window down a little, and this man asked,
“Excuse me, but my daughter has bronchitis and I am on the way to Klinik Idham to take her to see a doctor. I need RM17 to help pay for the consultation. Can you help me?”
Both of us, clearly taken aback, fell silent while trying to actually process what was going on and let it sink in. I turned to look at his motorcycle, there was a lady carrying a child on her lap, child’s feet dangling but she did not once turned around to look at us. A few seconds after, he asked again,”Can you help me?” And my friend turned and slowly apologised and shook our heads helplessly. After which he quickly took off without another word, jumped on his bike and sped off.
Huh.
We just stopped and stared for a while. I was starting to feel very uneasy about the whole thing. Should I have just given him some money? After all it was just RM17. Not RM100, or RM50 even. Maybe I was worried about it being a con, and refused be in that position. The thing that kept running through my head in that few seconds was that typical scene after a late night out in London, there was always a random guy coming around asking people on the streets for 2quid so he can take the bus to go home or something or other. And generally gets ignored by everyone.
But then again as my companion was saying, what if he really needed that help and all we did was just sat there? But then again, how are we to know about that? We discussed it for a length of time as well after he left and thought maybe the best thing to do was to give him the benefit of doubt, after all if he was going around conning people why not con for a few hundred ringgit?
It’s over of course. But I’m the type that always goes over things again and again, trying to think if there was possibly a way I could have handled that better. Well.
