I was on someone’s blog and wrote a long response to a post they made. In the end I didn’t bother posting it as I’m not big on social media of any kind nor having my name out there on every platform under the earth. However my reply had a memory in it that I hadn’t thought about in a long time and I didn’t just want to delete it. So I brought it over here. Maybe you can figure out a little of the context by what I wrote if not don’t worry about it.
I mostly don’t post on the web anymore in sort of the same vein as the helping people conversation here. We live in a legally dangerous environment that what you say and do will be taken out of context and used against you.
It’s hard to wash the feeling of shame down having changed my behavior from living in such fear or caution. I used to stop and help every person on the side of the road I would see. I picked up hitchhikers and gave them a life. I did so because I had been there and done that and had people help me or my mom when I was a child. The memories of helping and being helped are like a warm golden glow of a past idolized in my head.
maybe 25 years ago I started to pass by a few sketchy looking people as that caution/fear took hold. 15 years ago other than once or twice I stopped helping people on the side of the road totally as I was then married and had children with me. With the exception of women alone with children with them and my wife and me both present. I would still help people once in a while on my own. Now I’m older and less able to help even if I stop other than giving a ride or getting someone some gas etc… I’m also less able to protect myself physically which weighs in on the decision making. I make more call’s to 911 now to let them know there is an issue on the side of the road than I used to.
All the above being said. My actual experience has always been positive. A few weirdos but not in a dangerous way. I find most people to just be people and respond well to treating them and respecting them as people. A helping hand goes a long way. Regardless of what you hear on the news the statistics show that you are safer today in most of the country than in the 70s when I would stop for someone at the drop of the hat.
But that doesn’t account for lawfare!! that is something I do fear.
I will stop after a personal anecdote that is kind of related inversely to the above.
It was the early 90’s and I was maybe 23… tall rail thin young man that had served a single enlistment in the army. So I had some confidence but also knew I couldn’t win every conflict.
I was driving an old 69 Volkswagen Fastback if any of you remember what that was. I was on my way from my aunt and uncles farm in north carolina to my grandmothers just across the state line in south carolina. Just a few hundred feet from the state line on this little two lane road was a bar. This was the kind of place that was maybe 400 square feet in size, built of unpainted concrete blocks. Real run down and always with 15 to 20 customers hanging out on benches outside wearing wife beaters with arm muscles larger than my torso, drinking beer. This bar backed up on a really old run down trailer park. More cars up on blocks than drivable in front of most the trailers. I turned right at a stop sign to get onto that road about 150 ft from that bar and trailer park. There was a kid maybe 8 or 9 years old riding a bicycle in the other lane of the road in front of me, maybe 50ft from the bar, so I didn’t accelerate much pulling away from stop sign just to maybe 20mph till I got past him. Only I didn’t get past him. He saw me coming and slowly moved into my lane coming at me and I kept easing over and slowing more and more till he turned hard into me. I put the car in the right side ditch to keep from hitting him cussing out the window all the way to the bottom of a massive 9ft deep ditch. I went in slow and it had a slope on the road side so didn’t do any damage to the car other than the right side being buried in the mud at the bottom. I came out of the car mad and hollering at the kid that was just smirking at me. He had done it on purpose. This was before cell phones or at least cell phones for people in my income bracket and I was upset and also had that hollow feeling of almost clipping the idiot kid and wondering how to get my car out of the ditch. Then my heart fell into my stomach as all 15 or 20 guys sitting outside at the bar were casually walking down the road toward me as I was venting at this kid as he rode past me and back into the trailer park.
Did I mention that I was a skinny white guy and it was a poor black community right there? That I was cussing at a 8 year old kid on a bike in front of them. I got ice cold in a second or two and started trying to figure out how to survive what I though was coming.
They slowly sauntered up to me as I’m fearing the worst and the biggest one of them in the lead, maybe 6ft 5in and had to be 300lbs of nothing but muscle opened his mouth and said. “Damn man that was cold” my heart sank.. then he continued “that kid ran you off the road on purpose. That was just wrong. Glad you didn’t hit him. Lets get you out of that ditch.” I’m just standing there with my mouth open in shock as this wasn’t what my mind was expecting. Those guys just kinda moved me over out of the way and about 5 or 6 of them climbed down the bank and simply picked the car up and carried it back up on the road. shook my hand and wished me a good day. It left me in tears later on and taught me a really good lesson I thought I already knew about people being more good than not and not to pre-judge others.
I think about the consequences of using lethal force to help others in a school or mall type situation where it’s very obvious whats going on. I waver…. risking myself isn’t an issue other than the risk to my family of me not being there or the financial aftermath. I lean more on the doing something side, as the cost to my soul of not protecting and allowing others to come to harm from my choice not to help is high. I think it would be a poison that would eat at me the rest of my life. Though none of them have been of a serious nature like that I have not helped a couple times when I could in the past, one way or another, and those moments have left black scars inside.
I think I want to be a kid and mostly carefree again 🙂 Growing up sucks 🙂
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