Saturday evening, as I was leaving work, I gave a man $20 for him and his daughter to take the BART to Walnut Creek, because his wife just had a baby and his car broke down. (He only needed $7, but I didn't have change.) His version of the story was much longer, as he felt the need to assure me a half-dozen times that he wasn't going to kill me, and that he was a good man, and if his daughter wasn't with him, we would just jump in the bay and swim, and that he had never asked anyone on the street for anything, and that he was a man of his word, and he would send me a check first thing Monday morning, and that he had a job (he worked at a janitorial service, but he was a paper-pusher, not a broom-pusher -- he was wearing a tie), and his car really just broke down (see, here's the key!), and that he wasn't going to kill me. I suppose, if I would have been concerned about the money, I would have gotten his name or something. I'm not, but I do hope he tries to contact me. (I gave him my card, but it doesn't have a snail mail address on it.) If it turns out to be an "optimism tax" incident, well...that's the price we pay.