I used to pick up hitchhikers all the time. In my pseudo-hippie days, my ski-bum days, my there’s-an-attractive-girl-in-Seattle days, I was happy to pick up just about anyone who was headed the same direction. (Of course, hitchiking being illegal in Washington State, I always made sure to grab someone from the south side of the Columbia River.) Lots of interesting times, like the time I stopped halfway to the mountain to pick up a woman who, it turned out, was a straight-A high school classmate now living out of the back of her truck for the ski season. Or the time - and this was at least a statute of limitations ago - a guy in Eugene offered me a bowl of what I’m reasonably sure was crack-laced marijuana. I declined - my friend didn’t. But the aftermath of that is a story for another time.
I no longer take as many long drives, what with having a job and a kid and all. I hate to waste someone’s time for four miles on an interstate. But yesterday I was heading past Salem, nearly an hour drive, and yet I shrugged balefully at the shirtless, dreadlocked young man at the metered on-ramp. “I’m working,” my shrug said. “No can do.” And I was, but that wasn’t the reason. Neither were his dreadlocks, or his shirtlessness. I may be domesticated, but I’m not personally elitist*.
I don’t know why I didn’t stop. I mean, I do, superficially. Picking up hitchhikers is risky. Not so much safety-wise; I can pretty much take care of myself and it’s a busy freeway with a lot of potential stopping places. But it’s risky in another way, in that way that opening up one’s personal bubble is risky. Would he be an annoying companion? Is he on the lam? Will he offer me crack-laced marijuana, or meth, or whatever it is the cool kids are smoking these days? Will I be uncomfortable?
I think that last is the reason I didn’t stop. Which is funny, since I’m rarely actually comfortable. I mean, please, compared to the rest of the world, and compared to many sections of American society, I’m so comfortable I might as well be landed gentry. My car runs most of the time, and I have a backup when it doesn’t. I don’t punch a time clock or work my fingers to the literal bone. There’s food in the pantry, and extra. But somehow, I’m still neurotic, still fearful. I’m so neurotic that I’ve somehow decided that helping someone get from point A to point B, something I used to do as a matter of course, was just too inconvenient, too uncomfortable.
In that few minutes following my refusal, I suddenly saw laid out in front of me the entire vista of the “security first” mindset. I saw a flow chart which led from my extremely venial sin to the absolute supremacy of American security above all other considerations, including the security of what America really means. I never actually drank the Kool-Aid, mind you, but I saw where the sugar and the red powder really come from. American freedoms are shirtless, dreadlocked hitchhikers; I can safely ignore them because they’ll still get where they’re going. They don’t need it to be me that gets them there, and good, because they might make me uncomfortable. I’ve got mine, as meager in some ways as that can feel.
I should have just opened the car door. He just wanted a ride.
* Kind of. Even bringing up his appearance is definitely a statement of elitism, in a “methinks he doth protest too much” way. But what are you gonna do?
25 Responses to “The only things Americans should be torturing are analogies”
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these days there’s also craigslist.
As appalled as I am by what happened to Lennox Yearwood, the TSA ’security theater’ drills, the loss of American innocence with the adoption of
pre-emptivefirst strike, the trade of habeus corpus for an authoritarian executive branch, the damn war, etc., I discovered what had changed for me since 9/11.There was a show on about the second plane to hit the WTC. They realized there was a problem, that people had been stabbed, and that the plane was hijacked, after the first plane had already hit but before this one had. Their were already jets scrambled from the first wreck, but they didn’t do anything.
“Why didn’t they just shoot it down?” I thought.
Then I remembered. Back then, the idea of shooting down our own people was anathema. You do everything possible to get them back alive. You don’t give up. We’re Americans, and life is sacred here.
Now, better to kill 200 than 3000.
That’s what’s changed for me.
Plus I know understand how the Germans allowed Hitler and the Nazis to rise to power. (Did I just Godwin myself?)
Man, I really miss America. I’d be willing to trade 3000 lives in random bombings for a return of our civil rights, the return of our prestige, and the return of Americans who know that the only thing fear is fear itself. If the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, the answer is not to get rid of our freedoms.
Well, guess I got sidetracked. I remember hitchhiking. It was a rare occurrence for me, being female. I can’t imagine my kids ever feeling safe enough to do it.
Caren, that is a fantastic “soundbite”
I mean, it’s a little long for a bumpersticker, but MAN O MAN, that is pithy as shit!
Somebody send it to Edward’s speechwriters!! AManda, you probably still have Edward’s email, right?
But somehow, I’m still neurotic, still fearful. I’m so neurotic that I’ve somehow decided that helping someone get from point A to point B, something I used to do as a matter of course, was just too inconvenient, too uncomfortable.
Congratulations August, you have just tasted the female experience.
I remember writing something on the order of “I fear/don’t want to see the autoimmune rampage that this event will trigger in the American body politic” about six years ago. There is the visual damage to NYC, and there is the internal destruction it engendered.
Dude, I really needed a ride!
Well said, Ms. Kate. Ever since I was a tiny girl, I’ve had it pounded into my head that I was not, under any circumstances, supposed to pick up strangers. Ever. EVER.
It is just not done. Why? Because I will be raped/killed. Or killed/raped. And that is a fear I have to live with everyday. Perhaps my mother and father were overprotective, but it’s probably more likely that they are responding to something deeper. Women should live in fear, because men want to rape them.
Logically, there is no connection between hitchhiking and rape. However, urban legends and “common sense” would tell me that I’m just asking for trouble.
I don’t know how true that is. Probably not very. However, I highly doubt I’ll ever get past it enough to risk something just to give a stranger a ride.
As always, it’s the victims fault. I can avoid rape if I avoid this behavior. That is what it comes down to. How can we teach women to not get raped?
It’s just strange how inherently different male and female experiences really are.
ZOMFG! He was going to kill you and your children and blow up Seattle in a mushroom cloud!!!! You barely survived!!!!! It’s only a matter of time before one of these bare-chested dread dudes kills us all!!!! GONNA GITCHA!!!!!!!!!
Right, Karen. We all heard a thousand times not to be alone, not to be in a vulnerable position. I hadn’t looked to see who the author is, until after reading, but I knew it had to be a man from the content. Even the few women who do pick up hitchhikers are well aware that they are considered to be taking a big risk and most people would advise them not to.
On I-5 at the Wilsonville onramp several months ago a friend and I stopped to pick up what looked like a lone female hitchhiker (me = male, my friend = female). It wasn’t until after I stopped that I realized there was a male with her. I knew immediately that I wouldn’t have stopped if I’d known there was a guy. I struggled with that realization a bit.
I also wrote a little about the experience here.
I had two good female friends who hitchhiked from the west coast to the east coast and then back again in 2000. They were in their mid-twenties, good looking, completely clean-cut. They did the whole thing armed to the teeth, but they never ran into any sort of problem - the whole thing was, they reported, rather boring, in part because they were always picked up by people immediately who exclaimed, “do you have any idea what the hell you’re doing!?! Does your mother know you’re doing this?”
I’ve hitchhiked a lot, but never in the states. I’ve picked up hitchhikers a lot, but never in the states. Quite possibly the states much more dangerous than the rest of the world.. but it’s also because everyone in the states has a car. I mean, what sort of crazy person wouldn’t have their own form of transportation to get a few hundred miles away from someplace?
We all long for an age of innocence that never existed. I never pick up hitchhikers when I’m by myself, and it does not bother me. Nor do I give money to people holding up signs at intersections asking for money, god bless (nor does anyone else, as far as I can see). If I see someone in trouble, I call 911, as I did the other day when I passed by an auto accident that had just happened.
It’s OK. I do plenty of things for others, just not necessarily on an ad hoc basis.
Well, and I tried not to belabor this because it wasn’t particularly my point, but I’m fully aware that my privilege to consider picking up a strange person on the side of the road is just that - privilege. I did, however, hear the same “what the hell are you doing picking up strangers?” line from several people, although certainly with none of the same urgency.
Moreover, I want to clarify that my fleeting disappointment in myself for not picking up a hitchhiker does not, by any means, extend past my own nose. Others who never pick up hitchhikers - especially women - are not wrong. Not at all.
I’ve always been told not to pick up hitchhikers, too. However, I’m 6′3″, 250+lbs, and fairly observant. I recently picked up some hitchhikers myself with my son in the car. I did so with the intention of giving him the lesson that we don’t have to be afraid all the time, and sometimes, the guy just needs a ride.
Plus, one of the people was a skinny guy with dreadlocks. Maybe the same guy?
http://cranialhyperossification.blogspot.com/2007/08/long-and-winding-road.html
Of course, if you’re female, you barely even contemplate picking up hitchhikers. You know all too well whose fault it will be if something happens as a result.
You know all too well whose fault it will be if something happens as a result.
Well, I have to think, to assuage my own annoyance with the unfairness, that if one of Auguste’s passengers had robbed him at gunpoint, that there would be people who would blame him for being so stupid as to pick up hitchhikers. People who blame women for getting raped tend to resent everyone who’s having more fun and has a more positive attitude towards life than they do.
Word, SilenceIris.
it’s not the weird-looking hithcers you need to worry about - it’s the normal ones… I picked up a fellow, near the county courthouse; he hops in, says: “Dude, I just beat a felony rap! You wanna party?” Hm…
It was just fine, but I had to take a break on hitchhikers for a little while…
Dap- that was probably totally intentional. it is well known that guys are less likely to get picked up hitchhiking than girls. the dude was probably keeping out of the way so you wouldn’t see him at first.
Last time I hitched I-5 from Portland to Eugene, I had people stop and ask my gender (it was raining and cold, my coat wasn’t too form fitting) before picking me and a friend up.
I also got a long lecture from a truck driver about who he will or won’t pick up. In order of desirability-
two girls (that was us)
heterosexual couple
two guys
mom and kids
single girl (can be in trouble/make trouble)
single guy (ditto and more so)
interestingly, for him, the heterosexual couple was a good sign because it implied that they were out for fun rather than out hitching out of desperation. He was picking his rides mostly by guessing how fun a companion they’d be, I think.
I hitchhiked a lot in England when I spent a semester there (1991). Rarely had a problem getting rides. Got rides more quickly when I hitched with a female friend of mine.
On a camping trip to the Badlands, two women on the trip decided to hitch-hike back to the Twin Cities. They made it back with no problem at all.
interesting thing about the England college experience; the campus was about 3 miles out of town, and there was a spot on campus where you could stand and wait for rides into town, and a corresponding spot in town where you could catch rides back to campus. I never had more than a 5-minute wait in either spot.
Got lots of rides from lorry drivers who were just bored and wanted to chat. Hitching in Ireland was even easier than in the US, even in Northern Ireland.
I almost always give them a few bucks whenever I pass by. Though down here in Phoenix, they’re usually stationed at the highway off-ramps, so its a bit different from the intersections. I don’t pick up hitchhikers, even though I’m 6′1″, 240 lbs and male. I’ve been socialized into the fear. I’d actually like to pick one up at some point, but I’d rather have a friend in the car at the same time too.
THNX
I didn’t know venal and venial were both
good…and different words.
“Actually”, he gloated, “gotcha!, smart guy!”
Wrong!
“Nor do I give money to people holding up signs at intersections asking for money, god bless (nor does anyone else, as far as I can see).”
I always do — maybe a few quarters, maybe a buck or two. Not so much for the impact the measly money can make, which is trivial at best; just so that whoever it is gets at least some acknowledgement. Maybe they could find a more socially-approved way of supporting themselves, maybe they can’t, for whatever reasons. But I am always aware that it could easily be me, if I hadn’t been born to all kinds of privilege, and had all kinds of supports along the way that a lot of other people don’t have.
Caren:
You said: “I’d be willing to trade 3000 lives in random bombings for a return of our civil rights, the return of our prestige, and the return of Americans who know that the only thing fear is fear itself. If the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, the answer is not to get rid of our freedoms.”
Interesting. You don’t know me. Should I be one of the 3000 that you would trade? Which civil right have you lost that my life will restore?
“Interesting. You don’t know me. Should I be one of the 3000 that you would trade? Which civil right have you lost that my life will restore?”
Fleming, according to the NHTSA, in 2005 there were 43,443 deaths related to automobile use, including drivers, passengers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc.
Surely you’d give up some civil rights (driving your own car, for example) in order to eliminate your odds of being one of those statistics, right? After all, you’re much more likely to be killed in a car-related accident (there’s been over 250,000 auto-related deaths since 9/11 for example) than a terrorism-related incident, right?
What’s the loss of your right to drive compared to my life?…
Or are you one of those who is completely obsessed with IslamoFascists and their plans for your personal death while completely ignoring all the other causes of death in the world?…
As a former youthful hitchhiker, I still try to pick up any hitchhiker I see as a payback for the rides I got. That is IF it is convenient for me, and if I will be comfortable.
I always try to check the person out, look into their eyes while passing if possible, and try to make some kind of assessment based on their appearance.
I will be frank. If they at all strike me as somewhat psycho looking, like they might stink too much, or anything else that might make the ride unpleasant for me, then I pass them by.
Hippyish dreadlocks would probably not raise my flags, especially if it was a peace and love looking type, but for some reason, shirtlessness might.
The fact is, you might make an unfair assessment of the person based on something that raised a red flag, but better safe than sorry.
One of the most pleasant and interesting rides I recently gave was of a guy with a dreadlock/mohawk combination, and a tattoo on his face! The guy was a veteran of Gulf War I, he was educated and intelligent, and a semi-homeless drifter who just didn’t want to live on this societies terms. Most people would have passed him by based on his appearance. But he struck me as harmless, based on his kind eyes.
Some of the worst rides I have given was a guy who talked incessantly. Another was a guy who when I gave him permission to use my walkman and cassettes, listened to tapes for fifteen or thirty seconds, then would switch tapes. He did this continually for about two hours and it really irritated me!
You just got to make quik decisions based on instinct and who you think you feel comfortable with. And if you are a woman, I would not feel bad at all for not picking up hitchhikers, because the risks are higher for you.