"Need a ride?"
She's sitting in the back seat shivering. I think she's scared. She tries to warn me that she is going to meet her husband later. I can tell she's lying. Despite my age, I am a man, and she is a young woman alone in the car with me. I hadn't thought about how worried she must be travelling alone.
"My wife is waiting for me in Portland," I try to reassure her. "We've been together almost 60 years."
I ask her a bit about why she is out here hiking. She doesn't really give me a straight answer. She mumbles something about her mother before looking out the window. I resign myself to stop questioning her, and instead tell her about myself.
Eventually, she gets tired of listening to me, and I tired of telling her stories, so we just sit in silence. Finally, I let her out of the car.
As I drive away, I thought a lot about how scared she was. I worried about what her mother might think. What I would think sending my daughter off to hike all alone. While she may have feared me, I worried about this woman, Cheryl, like she was my daughter.
29 May
ReplyDeleteI too saw this woman on the road. She was all by herself and looked like she had been through a lot. Her clothes were dirty. Her foot appeared to be duck-taped. I was worried about this woman's safety being all by herself. Am I sexist for thinking this? If she was a man I would not be worried about her at all. I feel the urge to pick her up, but I do not typically pick up hitch hikers. But she is a woman, so I feel differently. Is this bad that someone's gender has that much of an influence about what I think about a person? I decided to pick her up because I know that she would be safe with me. I pick up her up and say hello and I take her to her location.