I am venting right now. Maybe it's petty, maybe it's not.
I live in subsidized housing that houses a lot of people who have been through rehab. Most of them are just people who got themselves straight and some of them are just normal people. And some of them are the people you read about on notalwaysright.com .
Yesterday I had someone knocking on my door asking to borrow $3. I said all I had was 20¢. The person then asked me to drive them down to the store. Now, I have two things I don't do here. I don't loan money to people and I don't give rides. I am one of the few people who have a car and it's an old car that I have to keep running as long as I can, so I try to do a limited amount of driving. I also pay the cheapest insurance I can get away with. It covers virtually nothing, but it's legal for my state.
In the last month, more than a couple of people have asked me to give them rides and a few of them more than one or two times. Since I don't like getting dressed and going out when I don't have to and because I ration my gas pretty carefully, plus I don't really feel like being anyone's personal chauffeur, I turned everyone down. I tell people I hope they understand I can't play favorites so I won't be giving anyone rides.
So I explain that again and the person wanting the $3 goes off. Today I'm doing my laundry (takes $2 in quarters) and I meet this person in the hallway. This is the conversation that ensued:
Him: Where'd you get the money to do laundry?
Me: I saved up my quarters.
Him: But you told me yesterday all you had was 20¢.
Me: I did. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, I had the quarters, but I needed them for my laundry today.
Him: Well, I don't know why you would tell me you only had 20¢ when you had money for laundry.
Me: Why would I? I wouldn't have loaned you that money anyway, because I needed it to do laundry.
Him: Well, the reason I was asking was because I needed to do
my laundry. I think if you had money you shouldn't have lied to me. I really needed to do my laundry.
Me: I hate to tell you this, but no matter how bad you needed to do your laundry, you couldn't have done it anyway because I wasn't going to loan my laundry money to you.
Him: I don't know why not. That's really cold, saying you don't have any money so you don't have to loan it out to someone who needs to do their laundry. *takes off*
Some days it's not worth chewing through the straps.