Shaving is the key.
If you saw me at your usual morning highway on-ramp and there I was standing with a sign that read, “Please Help, God Bless” and I was wearing some pretty gnarly shoes and ripped up pants and a backwards baseball hat for some team that wasn’t even the team of the hometown you’re from and I had a bag of oranges at my feet…but I was clean shaven? Well, hell. I would be the richest highway on-ramp pan handler ever.
I wouldn’t resort to having my pitiful looking dog sitting at my feet nor would I tell you I had served in a war or that I had starving children at home. I wouldn’t get up off my concrete divider and approach your car and/or your windows and try to get you to give me money that way. I would definitely not scream obscenities or act like I had a thousand voices in my head. I would simply nut-up, buy a damn razor, visit a local gas station bathroom, and emerge the clean-shaven pan-handler of your neighborhood.
You would probably love me.
I would provide receipts for your tax returns. I would greet you with a smile and some kind of great little saying that I would blurt out to you as you laid your change or (even better) paper money in the palm of my dirty little hand. I would say…
“Heart of stone, buddy.” “Right back atcha, Smith!” “I knew it was going to be you.” “This guy is the tops!” “My heart weeps at the sight of your generosity although my heart is technically in my chest and can’t see you and your generosity, it’s sort of a metaphor so c’mon, just go with it!”
You would sit there in your 100 thousand dollar car at the stoplight and you would look over to my personalized on-ramp and you’d think to yourself that the guy standing there with the sign is actually, a lot like you. I mean, clean shaven and all. He must have just been down on his luck, and recently, because bums don’t shave and since this guy on the on-ramp is clean shaven he must have just gotten fired this morning and jeez, that could be me out there and I might as well give him a twenty.
And you would. Because my smooth and soft-to-the-touch cheek-skin would hypnotize you and your magnetic money clip and before the light turned green, you’d be handing me some. I would then be extremely close to becoming the richest highway on-ramp pan handler ever.
Eva’.
What would I do with my riches? Well, seeing as though I wouldn’t have to pay taxes because it would all be cash and change and you don’t have to report that stuff, I would probably be pulling in about 70-80k a year. That’s not bad for just shaving every day. I would probably take that money, invest it in some high-end medical stocks and bonds, maybe even pick up that Audi TT I’ve had my eye on. Don’t get me wrong though, I’d still get up every day and trudge on down to my concrete, outdoor office.
It’s about having a work ethic and I would sure have one. And before long, you’d start talking about me in your social circles. The clean shaven pan handler. It’d be like The Legend of Billie Jean but without Helen Slater, who really, has nothing in common with a clean-shaven pan handler except for the fact that she wore tights in Supergirl and if I, the clean-shaven pan handler had failed, I would have most likely ended up wearing some tights for warmth in the winter months as I slept outside on my concrete on-ramp.
Thankfully, this would not be the case. And it is all thanks to one very cheap, very simple thing.
A disposable razor.
Comments