Little Lies

I was walking down Grand Street, like I do most Saturdays. It was cold and I didn’t really want to be outside, but I’m a creature of habit and was heading to my regular Saturday lunch spot. On the way I pass some sort of senior center/community building and today I saw a little crowd gathered out front.

“Would you like to buy a raffle ticket?” asked a little girl who was made all the more cute by the animal-head knit hat she wore.

“Sure,” I said, figuring I’d spring for five with the $5 bill in my pocket. “How much are they?”

“Twenty dollars,” she said.

“Twenty dollars?!?” I replied, in italics with an exclamation point.

“You could win $20,000,” explained an even littler, slightly less cute girl. Or perhaps the cuteness had just been drained from the moment.

“That’s a lot of money,” I said, purposely vague about which dollar figure I was referring to. But I was buying time, not raffle tickets. Because $20 is a lot for one ticket. And I’d just paid several bills. And freelance writing is not the world’s most lucrative career.

“Here’s the thing,” I said—as I am wont to say—”I don’t have the money with me. How long are you selling the tickets for?”

And I realized I was doing that thing I do. That thing where I don’t like to say no. So instead… I lie. I’ll ask a telemarketer to call back later and then when they do, I don’t answer. Now, I expected the little girl to say something like “Until the end of the month” and then I’d ask if there was a website where I could buy a ticket, etc. etc.

“Two hours,” said the less cute one, tersely.

“OK,” I said, thinking on my feet. “What I’m going to do is, I’m going to get some money from the bank, and then I’m going to come back.” As the words came out, it hit me: I’m lying to a little girl. That didn’t make me happy, but I already had it all figured out: I’d simply walk back from lunch up Clinton Street—as I normally do, let the record show—and I’d never have to see this shakedown crew again.

The kids seemed fine with this plan, but maybe because I was feeling guilty, I kept making small talk. “What are you raising money for?” I asked. It was some sort of bilingual something-or-other called HoLa. “It’s so we can go to sixth grade,” explained the cute-hat one.

“Sixth grade is important,” I said, already picturing a rush of fifth-grade dropouts, all because of me.

As I bid my farewell and walked away from the group, I could hear a little voice telling some adults, “He’s going to the bank and coming back.” And I knew those adults felt like car salesmen who’d unwillingly let me walk off the lot.

I got closer to the restaurant and was looking forward to sharing this anecdote with my proprietor friend. And I did feel bad about lying, but come on—twenty dollars? It was totally unreasonable.

I ate my soup, ate my sandwich, read my magazine, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I knew I could absolutely live with the lie—but not with how it was probably going to play out. They’d be standing out there in the cold, with their cute little hats, and at some point a mom would say “Come on, time to go” and maybe the cute one would say “Wait that man said he would come back” and her mom would say “He probably had something else to do” and they’d zip their coats up tight and walk away as the sun began to set. Life is going to have its let-downs, of that you can be sure. People will disappoint you over and over and over again. And the stupid thing is, the more of a trusting soul you are, the more disappointment you’ll get. And I realized, the girl may have all of those hard lessons ahead of her—but it wasn’t going to start with me.

I left the restaurant and went to the ATM—I honestly hadn’t had enough money with me. Walking back up Grand, I was very glad to see that my crowd was still there. A dirty-blonde little girl approached, waving a raffle book, but I explained that I had to see my same salesperson from before. I quickly spotted the animal hat. “I’m back from the bank,” I said. Adults in the background cooed, “Awww, that’s nice!” to which I answered, “I said I was coming back,” which made me feel a little like a jerk, but not too bad.

It’s a Dual Language Charter School and I hope they raise enough in the “Loco 50 Cincuenta” raffle to add a sixth grade to their program. Winning tickets will be drawn on March 26. I told the teacher that maybe I’d be lucky, because my birthday is the day after that. She said that the cute-hat little girl’s birthday is March 25, and maybe that’s why we connected. It was really kind of nice.

Now does anyone have twenty bucks I can borrow?