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I am a sucker for a get-rich-quick scheme (1/3)

The stranger made a beeline for my wife and me through the sea of Christmas shoppers, drowning in the desperation to find the perfect last-minute gift in Walnut Creek's open-air mall, Broadway Plaza.

"Wow, you have an amazing smile!" He said.

"Here we go," I thought, and I strained my eyelids hard so my eyeballs wouldn't roll.

I believe in being polite to everyone, but I know what's coming: "Would you be interested in peddling my sub-par product so I can get rich from your community, retire, and possibly win this month's contest, a pink mid-size sedan? If you get enough of your friends to sell this toothpaste, maybe I can finally take my wife to Maui, like my diamond-level mentor John did before she left me?"

He is not wrong.

I do have a winning smile, but it took me a while to understand that people don't compliment your smile in the first sentence they speak to you.

I am too trusting. I wasn't born to spot when someone was disingenuously complimenting my smile to get something in exchange. It took me a long time to understand that and, unfortunately, many instances in which I believed only to learn later on what people actually wanted. 

One of the first jobs I got in the States was in a "boiler room," calling hundreds of people a day. If you don't know, a boiler room is a place in a building that has heating equipment, but also a term that refers to the place where people call from to sell you worthless things.

Okay, it wasn't quite a boiler room. I wasn't deceiving sweet old people out of their retirements, but I was unsolicitedly calling hundreds of people to sell them crap.

I supervised and trained fifteen Spanish-speaking cold callers to interrupt people's day and ask them if they wanted to help the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society by buying subscriptions to magazines they would never read.

That's where I first met Jamal.

He was one of the sales guys in my team, and we immediately bonded over our desire to get rich quickly.
We stayed in touch after we both left DialAmerica, the place where we both learned how to dial for dollars, because the truth is that no one dials for dollars in America anymore because it is cheaper to DialSomewhereElseInTheWorld.

Jamal called me one time and asked, "Can we have a meeting at your house?"

What a weird question to ask a friend. If he wanted to hang out, he didn't need to ask for a "meeting." But I like Jamal, so I told him, "Of course. Come on over for... a meeting...."

Jamal came by on the day of our meeting. He knocked on the door, and I let him in.

The person who walked into my living room was a stranger in my friend's body who asked me, "Can any of your knives cut through a Coca-Cola can?"