I have lived on or near the East Side of Milwaukee my entire life, so I am somewhat desensitized to strangers asking for money.

It depends on my mood, but when asked for spare change or dollars, I respond in one of a few ways. I either mumble something about not having any cash on me, give them a few coins or offer to buy them a sandwich if they claim to be hungry.

In the past, every time I tried to offer to buy food, I received some mumbo-jumbo reason why the person needs money to buy food. That's when it's very clear to me by food they mean beer and although someone once told me there's a sandwich in every beer, I'm not down with buying it for random strangers. (Although I once gave a dollar to a guy in San Francisco holding a sign that read, "Alcoholic. Need money for beer." Hooray for honesty.)

On Sunday I had an unprecedented panhandling experience in front of a Walgreens. A nicely dressed woman asked me for a few dollars to buy "bread and bologna" for her kids. I told her I only had a debit card and kept walking. A few steps later, I stopped for some reason, turned around and said, "I guess I could put a loaf of bread and a package of bologna on my debit card."

Her face lit up and she said, "Really? OK."

We walked into the drug store together and over to the grocery aisle. I would be lying if I said it wasn't a little awkward, so I focused on reading the packages of food items while she picked out a loaf of cheap white bread and a small package of bologna from the fridge.

"I wish they had a bigger size," she said.

"How many kids do you have?" I asked.

"Four," she said, inspecting the small stack of lunch meat.

"Better get two," I said.

I then grabbed what I needed and paid for it all at the cosmetics' counter.

"Thank you," she said, taking the food and looking me in the eye.

"You're welcome," I said, looking her in the eye, too.