Just now I'm racing down Ashland Ave. on the last leg of my four-mile run, and I'm barrelling past a round-faced drunk with a beard that makes his head look like a purple tennis ball.
"Heyougotaspare …" he slurs just like Otis Campbell on The Andy Griffith Show, and in the split second before he finishes his sentence, I figure he's about to say 'dollar'—"cigarette?"
Instinctively I slap my gymshorts pocket and, finding no Chesterfields, I say a quick but sincere apology and run on, laughing.
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