Cupidity + Stupidity

Could it happen just anywhere, anywhere at all? Are people so freighted with a personal sense of entitlement and greed that a majority would react the same way anywhere? One can't help but wonder.

Wonder, perhaps, what you would do if approached by an absolute stranger who suddenly relates a tale of having won a fortune, and in a spirit of giving, was not even willing, but eager, to extend her good fortune toward you. That would, of course, depend on your pecuniary circumstances, whether or not you might wish to accept.

On the other hand, people out shopping for themselves, at a well-known clothing emporium selling winter coats, must have the wherewithal to make purchases, otherwise why would they be there? They're not charity cases, one would assume. There are other options; to shop at, for example, places where second-hand clothing can be found.

Even people who have money to spare do that, now. There's a certain cachet to do it, of frugality, of a social awareness of the need to recycle items, akin to a growing dedication among the public toward environmental awareness.

It would appear that a store-full of shoppers presented as gullible self-attainers, ready to believe what a perfect stranger avowed, that she was prepared to spend up to $500 per shopper, out of a sense of social generosity in celebration of her $1.5-million lottery win. After all, the limousine that sat idling outside the store was the very vehicle that had transported her to the Burlington Coat Factory store in Columbus, Ohio.

The eager shoppers took her at her word, and began feverishly shopping in the store to gain personal advantage of a kind none had ever before experienced. Many rang up friends and family members on their cellphones, to rush right over and take advantage of this miracle. The store began to fill up with all those who felt they too were entitled to be gifted by the generosity of this radiant woman whose purpose was so obviously to make people feel good about life and the generosity of strangers.

No one, it would appear, thought very deeply about what might be occurring. No one, it would seem, even believing that the woman had the funds to dispose of, attempted to cajole her into using her money otherwise; for charitable purposes, for example. To give the equivalent sum of what she was suggesting to the poor, to food banks, to assisted housing, to help pay for medical treatment for underprivileged children.

Greed coloured peoples' thoughts and stained their perspective. And then, when it eventually became clear that this was a bit of a hoax, that the woman had been fantasizing, she had falsely represented herself, her means and her intentions, reaction set in. People were frantic to have their dream of clothing items paid for by someone else be restored to reality. Who would be so cruel as to raise expectations and then leave people in the dumps of reality?

Perhaps she was addicted to brief moments of public adulation and acclaim, and on this occasion got her fix. When she departed in the limousine, ostensibly to withdraw funds from a bank with which to consolidate her promise to the clamouring, arms-festooned-with- potential-purchases giftees, it gradually began to dawn that nothing more than the excitement they had all shared would be forthcoming.

Nonetheless, the pumped-up shoppers stood there with their purchases at the cash registers, demanding that they be allowed to take home their unpaid-for loot. An estimated 500 shoppers there in the store, and another thousand, awaiting entry so they too could take advantage of this amazing opportunity to avail themselves of some stranger's sudden burst of generosity.

Becoming obstreperous on the process, necessitating that the police be called in to exert control over what was fast descending into riot proportions, the store's contents being ransacked, fixtures overturned, angry shoppers demonstrating their misery and disappointment over having been duped, their blissful expectations blown through the nastiness of reality.

The woman, Linda Brown, was arrested by police when the limousine driver of the stretch Hummer, realizing that he too would not be paid for that day's outing, drove her directly to a local police station. A mental health evaluation of the woman is slated to establish her condition of mental stability, before other charges can be laid.

No charges as yet have been levied against others, such as those shoppers who filched items of clothing and fled with them, although police are inspecting the store's videotapes. As for the other shoppers, perhaps a mental health evaluation could be done en masse to establish their coping abilities, living in the world of as is, not what if.