I knew that women possessed a God given ability to be good at persuasion but this time I was in shock. This chick that I know, whom I will refer to as Beggergirl, had to have had the skill of a New York street bum to pull this off. I’ll admit it. I was about to reach for my wallet before I started eyeballing some other female behind Beggergirl.

We were sitting at the cafeteria lunch table and all eight seats were filled. She made an announcement that she wanted to buy something to give to her dad for his birthday and that she was taking up a collection so that she could buy it. At first I thought, “she must be crazy if she thinks that she’s gonna get my money that easily. I don’t even donate to cancer societies what chance does she have?”

“What are you buying him?” somebody asked.

“I can’t tell you,” she replied.

Now this was turning into a joke. “Beggergirl, if you wanted lunch money why don’t you just say so,” I asked. But then she pulled out a few bucks that she said she was using to buy food.

“No, I’m serious. I really am buying something for my dad.”

“But you can’t tell us what it is.”

“Nope.”

She had the entire table in an uproar. Some of us were trying to guess what it was. Among the common and repeated guesses were a bong, a stripper, a bag of weed, and concert tickets. Unfortunately she said no to all those things. It’s not that I particularly wanted it to be any of those things (even though if it was I would think that Beggergirl was the best gift giver a father could have) but I just wanted to know what the hell she was buying. I wanted to pull my hair out listening to the others guess and hearing her keep saying no.

Everyone else must have been feeling the same thing because eventually they started trying to bribe her into telling them what it was.

“If I give you the whole three hundred dollars will you tell me what it is?”

“Sure.”
Obviously that didn’t happen but instead of negotiating some people just started handing her money and saying, “Will you tell me now.”

“Nope.”

She said it in such a high pitched, short, squeaky little “can’t-catch-me” sort of way. I imagine that’s exactly how the Gingerbread man would have said it. I couldn’t decide if it was cute or annoying. Maybe I just wanted to hear ‘yes’ just so that I could know what it was.

I know that she eventually did raise enough money but to this day I don’t know what she bought for her dad. There is something else I’m sure of.