Double Dip

More than a decade ago, I was seated on a rickety chair at an unsteady table in a dilapidated bar of an unsound college town. A young man sitting across from me reached across the table to a pack of Marlboros lying next to my pint of Guinness, removed a cigarette, lit up, and said, "Some people are givers, and some people are takers."

I laughed, mostly because he was a simpleton in the truest sense of the word, and said, "If only I were interested in people." He was a bit too stupid to figure out he'd just been taken, but that's a given.

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Occasionally, people will ask me for something, such as, "Are you going to eat those cheese balls?" and whether someone is asking for food, requesting permission to lay hands upon that which is mine, or simply offering a pleasantry as premise to pilfering a plate is irrelevant as well as perplexing, for the people who ask are the ones that needn't. Folks are funny like that.