Spock Misses The Point

I was sitting at Circular Quay today, minding my own business and just resting my legs after my usual CBD photo-walk, when a woman walked up to me half laughing half sort of crying.  She said she had run out of petrol and didn’t know what to do.  She said she’d spoken to some police and they were no help.  I thought, “Oh great, here we go, another scammer.”  She was acting rather hysterical and seemed keen to carrying through with the whole story, so I told her to calm down, sit down and explain to me exactly what happened.  She started badly.  She was covering her mouth sporadically, in a rather nervous way.  Obviously she hasn’t rehearsed enough in front of the mirror.  She would’ve spotted that straight away.  But I just think she had a bit of stage fright.  Anyway, after she told me she was from Melbourne, that she needed to get to Liverpool, and that she just had to get to a petrol station to buy a can of petrol but (and here’s the clincher) she didn’t have her cards with her, I asked her where her car was.  “Clarence Street”, she said.  I asked if she had her car keys with her.  She took them out of her pink handbag and jangled them to show me.  That was the other flaw in her performance too.  She jangled the car keys for way too long, and with a change in expression that didn’t match her earlier hysteria.  It was a smirk and raised eyebrow that telegraphed, “See?  See?  Now do you believe me?”  She was selling it too much.  She then kept saying sorry to bother me, and that I looked like a nice person.  So I said, “Well, let’s go.  I’ll walk you to a service station, I’ll get you a can fill with some petrol.  I’ll walk you back to your car.  Fill the tank.  I’ll make sure you get on your way OK.”  She replied, “Oh I should be OK.”  I was starting to get disappointed.    She said, “Oh this is so hard to say.  I was wondering if you could just spare me the cash.  I should be OK getting back to the car myself.”    This game was about to end.  I assured her, “But I insist.  I just want to make sure you get on your way without any hassles.  I don’t mind the walk at all.”  To that she replied, “Why?  Oh, so you don’t want to help me.  Is that it?”  Poor form.  Her emotional transition was way too abrupt, which made it not believable at all.  “I’d rather get you the gas and make sure everything works out till the end, than just to give you the money.”, I said.  “So you don’t want to help me then.  Well, you’re a fuck wit!”, she yelled.  Her ending was forced and reactionary, but it did give her a chance at an alternate ending, if the person she yelled at actually felt guilty about not helping, as she was suggesting.  She got up quickly and walked just as quickly away, passed the crowd and turned around the corner to George Street.  I laughed as she got up, half to retort, and half because I actually was quite entertained.

Her performance was unpolished and lacked confidence.  Her plot line was full of holes.  Her improvisational skill was rusty and ill prepared.  To finish it off her ending was on the self conscious side.  3 stars out of 5.

I usually just hang up on spam phone calls, but since this was actually done in person, I thought I’d go the extra mile to waste her time in return.

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