Two days ago, I came home seeing a young teenage african-american girl walking in our neighborhood. After I parked the car in the garage, I walked out to check the mailbox. The young lady seemed to be having no luck knocking on doors, so when she saw me she called out for my attention and then walked right over to me. Her first words to me were:

"Excuse me sir! Could I count on you to vote for me?"

I was confused, "What?"

She said, "I need you to vote for me? Can you vote for me?""

I said, "Vote? For what?"

She said she was a youth mentor for inner city kids and she was going around the neighborhood collecting "votes" from people who could help her out. I asked her what the vote was actually for and she never answered my question. Instead she pulled out a sheet of paper from her backpocket and said that I could help her out by giving her my "votes". As I scanned the sheet it took me a minute to realize what I was looking at: It was a list of magazine titles.

So after a few minutes through her pitch, I actually had to ask her, "Um... so you're out selling magazine subscriptions?"

But she didn't admit that. Instead she responded, "No sir, I'm collecting support to allow me to mentor kids. For every magazine subscription that you buy from this list, I can mentor 1 kid. If you buy from this list, I can mentor two."

When I'm being solicited for money, I usually ask for some pamphlet or identification so I know what organization I'll be supporting and where my money is going. So I asked her if she had a brochure or information so that I could maybe look up the information online and then come to a decision later about whether I wanted to "vote" for her.

At that point she got really defensive! "Whoa, why are you asking for this information?" she asked. I said, well I just want to know what organization you're with and where my money will be going. That was the last sentence I was able to say to her. She didn't have any information but instead just said, "Look, I'm the one out here walking the neighborhood and asking for money, so that shows that I'm not a scammer. When I collect money, I also get your personal information so you can be sure that I'm not just out to get your money."

?!?!?!?!

At that point, she said, "You should be a little more trusting of people who are trying to help people in the community instead of just assuming that everyone is trying to scam you out of your money. You have a nice day, sir."

At that, she walked away.