Trouble in Mill Valley

Yesterday I saw a couple high schoolers scam an old man.

I was at the Safeway in Mill Valley, one of the ritzier parts of already affluent Marin County, and the Safeway happens to be across the street from Tamalpais High School, so every afternoon it and the shopping center around it are flooded with high schoolers making trouble and buying energy drinks.

I was in the checkout line, with an older man behind me buying mostly yogurt and high fiber bread, and a high schooler behind him.  Another kid comes up to that kid.

Wandering kid: Hey Aiden, loan me a dollar.
Kid in line (Aiden): No, why?
Wanderer: I don’t have any money and I’m starving.
Aiden: Why didn’t you go home?
Wanderer: I missed the bus.  I’m going to have to sleep here tonight and I need dinner.
Aiden: You’re sleeping here again?
Wanderer: Yeah, I’m going to sleep at the bus stop.

At this point, the old man behind me pulls out his wallet and passes the kid money, I don’t know how much but it sure looked like more than one dollar, and the kid goes, “Really? Oh, really? Thank you sir!” (At least he was very polite.)  Then he kind of leaves but lingers in the aisle behind us looking at ice cream toppings, which he was surely not going to buy for dinner.  The kid in line very kindly helped the old man unload his groceries onto the conveyor belt and then kind of…left, at which point I realized he didn’t have anything to buy anyway.  Then I also realized the poor sleeping-at-the-bus-stop kid was the one that I had seen walking back and forth across all the checkstands (casing the joint?), deliberately making his shoes squeak, which I noticed because it annoyed me.

The thing is, it was pouring rain and for a minute I felt bad for the kid too, like, I was wondering if I should buy him a sandwich with my nonexistent money.  But then I became pretty sure that if he’s going to high school in Mill Valley, dressed as well as he was, he’s probably not starving or stuck without a ride home.  Although if it was a scam, it was sure a polite one.

Then this reminded me of The Great Fake Scavenger Hunt…but that’s a story for another time.