Yesterday after school, the eight-year-old Scout rebuked me for neglecting to roll down the window for a panhandler at the Eisenhower off-ramp at Kostner Avenue.
"Dad, give him something!"
"Sometimes I give and sometimes I don't," I said. (Mom, meanwhile, gives at least a dollar to everyone who asks for anything. Go ahead. Ask her for a dollar. She'll give it to you.)
"You know, I told Mom the other day that if I got a pot of gold, I'd give it to poor people."
"All of it?" I said, stalling.
"Yep. And you wouldn't do that, would you?"
"No," I said, adding weakly, "I'd keep some of it for us."
She shook her head in my rear view mirror, and went back to her math homework.
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