I'll admit it. Sometimes, I do stupid things. *gasp*. I know, it's unbelievable!
Sunday night was one such instance. You see, I was driving along, rocking out with the windows off and the breeze blowing through the Jeep. I was turning onto a side street heading to the gas station when I heard someone yelling at me to stop. So, I slow down, look around and try to figure out what the heck is going on. Turns out that a guy needed a ride down the street. For the sake of humanity, I'm going to leave out ethnicity here because it doesn't really matter. The root of the story is still the same.
Anyway, for whatever reason, I stop and decide to give the guy a ride about 1/4 a mile down the road. At first, I wasn't scared. I thought "people used to do this all the time, it's no big deal, it's just down the road." But then, my imagination got the better of me and I felt myself press the accelerator down just a little bit harder than I had been before. I feel my stomach tensing up and I can only imagine what my face must have looked like to the guy in my car. I start working through what I'll do if he mugs me. What I'll do if he pulls a gun out. What I can give him to save my life and make it home in one piece. I start working through every scenario. Which, of course, only scares me that much more.
Luckily, we get to the gas station and he gets out, and no harm is done. Whether he had intentions of harming me, I'm not sure. But, I'm safe and can continue with my life unscaved.
What disappoints me about this situation is not my stupidity in stopping to pick up a stranger who happened to be male. What gets me is that we live in a society where people are afraid to stop and help. We're afraid that the guy with the flat tire is really just doing it so he can pull a gun on us and take all our money. Or we're worried that giving someone a ride down the road will end in a mugging. We're too afraid to stop most of the time; at least, I know I am. So yeah, it probably wasn't smart to stop and pick up a strange male from the side of the road. I know that. I probably won't do it again because I did a pretty good job of scaring the ever living daylights out of myself. But it breaks my heart that we live in world where we're scared to stop and give someone in need of a helping hand.
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