One of my New Year’s resolutions is to share more of myself and my life. My brain is still sifting through crumpled wrapping paper and discarded Christmas trees, trying to find normal again. I figured the best way to get out of my slump is to tell a story from my past.

The two times I have given strangers a ride in my car neither of them were hitchhiking. When I bought my first car I was not yet twenty-one and I didn’t have many friends so I would sometimes just drive around my town enjoying my new freedom. I’ve always enjoyed a good drive and I still do. On one particular drive I was on a road that went from the edge of town and took you waaaaay out of town. It was dark and I was having a good time just listening to my music. I passed a pizza place then I passed a girl dressed in that pizza place’s uniform, she looked like she was about seventeen. I could tell she was walking home. A little voice inside me said, “You should offer her a ride. It is dark and she is walking all by herself.” I ignored that voice and used the excuse that I had already passed her and it would probably freak her out if I turned around and drove up to her and offered her a ride. As I continued driving the feeling of guilt continued to grow. I told myself that if I saw her on my way back home I would stop and offer her a ride. I figured I wouldn’t have to make good on my promise to myself because I assumed she probably lived near where she worked. She surely wouldn’t be walking if she didn’t. I continued driving frivolously,  wasting gas and listening to music, but that girl stayed on my mind. What if someone offers her a ride but they are bad and they hurt her? I drove through a neighborhood and when I came back out I decided it was time to head home. I drove back down the main road and about a block from the neighborhood I had just exited I saw the girl walking up the sidewalk. At first I thanked God that she was still ok and then I drove up to the sidewalk and offered her a ride. She was stunned at first but ultimately she accepted.

When I asked her where she lived she told me it was a ways out and she would let me know when we got close. She said that her mom usually picked her up from work but she had called and told her that she wasn’t going to be able to make it. I couldn’t believe that anyone would allow their child to walk home from work that late at night in a questionable area. The least her mother could have done was arranged for someone else to pick her up. As we got deeper and deeper into the boondocks I got angrier and angrier that her mother was going to make her walk such a long distance. We drove for probably fifteen minutes before she told me her house was coming up. We had covered a distance that would have certainly taken that young girl two hours to walk, all alone, late at night, past the neighborhood where people go to buy drugs (not the same neighborhood I had been exploring), up a huge hill and through the woods. The thing that made me the most incredulous, though, was that when I pulled up to her house there was a perfectly operable-looking car parked out front. I was so glad that I was able to keep something bad from happening to her on her way home from work. I told myself that night that I would always listen to the voice inside that tells you when someone needs your help. Unfortunately, I have faltered at this mission a time or two. In fact, I was thinking of one such incident this morning, but that is a story for another post, or maybe not.