That was scary and BRAVE, too! I am in awe. And IT reminded me of an experience I had -- you'll see the similarities.
An important difference in our experiences was that mine was a product of stupidity.
I was driving on a road maybe 3 or 4 miles from our house. It's a road at the end of which I happen to know are a few automobile repair shops.
I saw a man standing by the side of the road hitchhiking. I would ordinarily never think, if I were alone in the car, of picking up a hitchhiker, but this man had wet hair, and looked like he'd just stepped out of the shower, and I felt I understood his situation immediately -- he lived in one of the houses by the road, and was just trying to get a lift down the road to pick up his newly repaired car. He was, I felt, a neighbor in need.
So I picked him up.
Well, I was right about the shower. What I was wrong about was where he'd just come from. He had just minutes before been set lose from a nearby mental institution. He volunteered that he had been sent there because of the complaint of some vile woman that he had attacked her. And that he HAD attacked her, indeed, but she had asked for it. He was simmering with rage. I showed great sympathy for his situation and much disapproval of that terrible woman, you may be sure.
I asked him where he wanted to be let off but he wouldn't tell me. He would only tell me that he would be going soon to Vinal Haven, Maine, to find a sunken treasure he knew the location of. But first he wanted to know where I was going, and where I lived.
I was so terrified.
I tried to be vague, but he was insistent.
I got to a cross road, stopped the car, said, insanely, really, "I'm not allowed to tell anyone my name."
To my surprise, he acted as though that was a normal thing for an adult woman to say, and got out of the car. |
