Day of Doubt

I was running late returning to my slot in the corporate machine and a guy was walking along the road.

If you don't live in hard-core suburbia, carlessness is more suspicious than homelessness. If you're not obviously 'exercising,' people want to know what's wrong. Case in point: when we were a one-car family, a rode my bike to work when the weather permitted, and I worked nights then. So I'd be cruising home at 3:00 a.m. DPS cruisers would pull up by me and ask what I was doing.

Doing?

'Commuting,' I'd say, inviting more scrutiny instead of less, even though it was the most truthful answer I could give.

As I passed the guy he gave me a thumbs up. I gave him one back. 'Way to go,' I thought, then 100 yards down the road, I think, wait: he's hitching. I would have picked him up, too. First, because that stretch of road between the Presto and my employer, when my car crapped out a couple of guys in a pickup gave me a lift the mile or so and I karmically owe them. Second, because if he's a predator, this stretch of road is the last place he'd expect to find victims. Without going out of my way, I'd only have carried the poor guy a couple of blocks, but still. Maybe that couple of blocks counted to him. He was bundled well, carharts and all, but still, it was 25ºF.

What I feel worst about is that I contributed to this guy's (likely and probably well-founded) view that no one helps anyone these days. I mean, if the Texas Chainsaw Massacre worst-case scenario is assumed to be 'normal' (unlikely), what would he get besides my skin? A 1988 Buick with flaking paint? The clothes off my back (Wal-Mart, clearance outlets and Salvation Army Thrift)?

On a seperate front, I get email notice when someone replies to these threads. Someone named 'Anonymous' replied to a post I made over a month a go, highly critical of nothing I can see. Folks, learn to hate correctly. I can live with you being wrong (i.e. disagreeing with me), but be clear about how you want to approach being wrong.