When I was a homeless teenager, I was out driving around a suburb of the rural deep south town I lived in.
It was around midnight and all of a sudden, a young, beautiful Asian girl wearing white poofy boots and a white fur coat jumped out in the street and flagged me down.
Mostly in amazement, I stopped and asked her what was going on, but she had very poor English.
She asked me for a ride, but she couldn’t properly say the name of where she wanted to go.
I said sure, why not? It’s not like I have anything else to do, so I brought her with me, and I kept asking her trying to get an understanding of where she wanted to go, and eventually I realized she needed to go to the downtown area to one of the larger hotels there.
So finally having figured out her destination, I took her there, even though I was almost out of gas and it’s not like I had a lot of money to replace it.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way her face lit up when we arrived at the hotel, and she finally knew where she was.
I pulled into the valet area, and she got out, and I was about to drive off when she stuck her head back in and gave me a surprise kiss on the cheek, which at the time meant that she was only the second person to have ever kissed me.
I still smile about that, because I didn’t expect it.
I was just glad to be of help.
That’s one of my fondest memories of having an opportunity to do something for somebody else. Every once in a while, I think about her, and I hope she’s doing okay.
I know the prevailing wisdom is often to exercise “stranger danger” but i will always have extra respect for someone who’s willing to put that aside to try to help someone. Yeah, bad people exist out there, but so do good ones. I’ve helped a few people by giving a lift in similar circumstances and always kinda wondered if i was taking too big a risk afterwards. It’s my nature to want to help and i guess i just had to go with my gut when determining if the person was dangerous or a risk in some way. I would hope i would receive help from a stranger if i was truly in need, so I’d like to provide that to another when I can be the helper as well.
stranger danger was a bullshit campaign to destroy communities and make people dependent on police, now my municipality spend almost half it’s budget on police.
statistically speaking, people (especially children) are more at risk with people they know, than strangers. and them being able to ask strangers for help would help fight child abuse.
Damn, that’s a really good point. Plus as a repair guy I’ve been going to strangers houses for over 2 decades and while I’ve met some “interesting” people, it really does seem unwarranted to be suspicious of everyone you don’t know. I appreciate your comment, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It’s amazing how much bullshit we were taught as children (and how much of it sticks with us)
I always clock flag and bumper sticker choices in my neighborhood for a similar reason.
what’s a clock flag?
People say so much, too much, about themselves with what they put on their vehicles.
The stick people families with pets still make me question peoples intelligence.
What Information are you Driving Around?
Helping you illustrate your point :)
Tempted to get a “back the blue” and “fuck the police” stickers. Confuse everyone
OK, Private Joker.
I’ve seen undercover cop minivans with those stickers, they weaponized that lack of intelligence.
