nothing's for free

Saturday night I was out celebrating theMonica's birthday. We were walking down the street and some pseudo-hobo/entreprenuer was handing out newspapers, free ones (the kind you get from a newspaper machine, but they require no coinage), to passersby. Well, I grabbed one because, hey, free paper and walked right on by. This guy says, "There's a suggested monetary donation sir." And I shrug, arch my eyebrows and kind of nod as if to say, "Suggested monetary donation noted and declined. Thank you." At this point, he's following me and yells, "SUGGESTED MONETARY DONATION SIR!" As if to say, "I want to make it seem like I'm not panhandling even though I'm handing out free newspapers and trying to get money for them and I probably have a razor blade in my pocket so give me some damn money!" I turn around and say, "You want money? For this?" And kind of open up the paper in a "we both know this is worthless and readily availabe in metal boxes citywide" kind of way and then hand him back the paper. But I totally read like a paragraph - for free . . . sucker.