Here you go, sir. Twenty bucks. Really. Take it! Ma’am, you’ll never guess what I’m giving away today. Yes, it’s a $20. Enjoy!

So that’s how it feels. Handing out free money in the drizzle yesterday, I could finally see why Larry Stewart, aka the Secret Santa, spent the past 26 years giving away $1.3 million to strangers on the street.

Stewart can’t give his away anymore, at least, not physically. He died Friday from complications of esophageal cancer, at 58.

On his Web site, the Kansas City cable TV-long distance entrepreneur recalled how he had been so poor and hungry as a young man that in 1971 he went into a diner and ate a huge breakfast he had no way to pay for. The diner owner leaned down and said, “Son, you must have dropped this.” It was a $20.

Only later did Stewart realize that no one had dropped that money. It was a gift. And later still, he decided to start gifting in his own right. By the time he made his first million, 1982, he was handing out $100 bills to astonished strangers.

Stewart’s example inspired a whole lot of people to try his particular random act of kindness — including me, a gal normally so cheap I buy the off-brand Rice Krispies, which are so hard they hurt my children’s teeth.

But inspiration is inspiration.

“I’m excited!” my recipient no. 1, Emilio Vuchev, exclaimed. He’d been handing out fliers for a pizza parlor when suddenly here he was in possession of a $20 bill. And what would he spend it on?

“A present for my mother.”

They still make guys like this?

“Flowers,” he said. “And something sweet, like chocolate.”

“Hey!” I floated away, thinking. “I just, albeit indirectly, surprised someone’s mom!” But the lady I approached next brought me back down, fast.

“What is this for?” she frowned.

“For you. For anything you like. Really.” (Did this happen to Stewart, too?)

“Well I’ll put it in the collection plate,” she sighed.

You have a nice day, too.

Walking around with money you’re going to give away is a strange, secret feeling. Only you know you are about to change someone’s day. That must have been what Stewart found so fun. That also probably explains why he remained doggedly anonymous until last fall, outing himself only because he thought a tabloid was about to do it.

With the tingling, however, comes the tug of responsibility, too — whose day aren’t you going to change? I was just about to cheer up a chilly-looking hat vendor when a man limped by. His belt was a sock.

“Here’s a 20.”

“Oh God, really? Thanks!”

He ran off as fast as his limp could take him and I — even though you’re not really supposed to worry about where the money is going — ran off right behind him.

Where would he go? A bar? An OTB parlor? A drug dealer? He looked so desperate.

But no. He ducked into the Seaport restaurant on Fulton. I asked the cashier what he’d bought.

“Coffee and Tylenol,” she replied.

Downstairs at a subway candy shop, I gave the proprietor my second-to-last $20. “I look at this as a recompensation,” he said happily.

For?

“This year I spent over $400 on Christmas presents for kids I don’t even know. We had them delivered to my mom’s house and she hands them out to a lot of kids, ‘Here, honey, here’s a toy!’ Do it every year.”

And I was congratulating myself for handing out $100?

“You should give a $20 to my friend Lance in there,” the candyman, Frankie G., said, pointing to an ancient shoeshine man sound asleep on his stool. “He hasn’t had any business all day.”

Lance was going to use the money to get something to eat. He looked delighted at the prospect. But first he had a serious job to do.

“Get up here.”

I climbed onto the shoeshine throne, a place I’d never been.

“He’s the best,” Frankie said. “He shined a pair of boots for me one time so well that when I went home I walked like this” — he pantomimed a tip toe — “not to get them dirty. I haven’t worn them since because I just like looking at them.”

I like looking at mine now, too. Because if you look real close, you can see Larry Stewart smiling back up.