9 June 2006

Riding in Cars

--by Mike Murray

As I was driving home from a tiring round of Christmas shopping one snowy December night, I observed a woman waiting for a bus. And as often happens to me these days, I was jolted out of silly unreality. It became immediately clear to me that I had no business fretting over the "ordeal" of wending my way through a sea of mall crawlers.

While waiting for the traffic light to change, I more carefully scrutinized the woman standing at the bus stop. She appeared to be in her mid- to late-sixties. Paper shopping bags suspended from each of her clutched hands, the weight of which slightly sagged her shoulders. She appeared tired. More than tired. Her posture and her expression revealed a deep weariness.

Her day had no doubt been considerably more difficult than had mine. For a long moment, I considered lowering the passenger-side window and offering the woman a ride. I decided against it and drove on.

It was dark, after all. The woman was black; I am white. And, while not elderly, she was older than I. I worried that she might find my offer suspicious. Sinister even, perhaps. In today's world, it's harder than it used to be to differentiate between kind offer and predatory advance.

My mind turned to memories of related incidents. I recalled the time during my high-school days when I had completed a run at Edgewater Park and was waiting for my mother to pick me up. (It was my habit to run to and from the park as part of my workouts, but during this particular Christmas break the snow was so deep that sidewalks were impassable. My session at Edgewater, in fact, had involved more bounding than running. So I gratefully accepted my mom's offer of a ride "to and from.")

The temperature was bitter, somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a cold wind blowing in off Lake Erie. And I was soaked through with sweat from the effort of making my way through deep drifts.

Observing my discomfort, a man in a parked car offered to let me wait inside his idling vehicle. The opportunity to come inside, into a comfortably heated environment, was compelling. Still, I hesitated.

Though I could not know for certain, I suspected that the man was homosexual. That in itself didn't trouble me. But such men who parked at Edgewater were usually looking to "hook up" for casual encounters. He was middle-aged; I was a teenager. I didn't know if it would be prudent to accept the invitation.

Ultimately, I relented. Shivering in below-zero wind chill, worsened considerably by my workout-soaked clothing, I decided to take a chance.

The compassionate stranger couldn't have been nicer. While probably there to seek opportunities to meet other men, he made no overture to the adolescent me. He instead made pleasant, casual conversation -- which included an inquiry as to the reasons anyone might have for hopping through very deep snow in such frigid weather -- and then wished me well when my ride showed up.

Years later I was stopped at a traffic light while driving north along West 117^th Street. A young woman advanced from a bus shelter and asked how far I was going. I replied that I was planning to pick up the Interstate and head toward Westlake. I was on my way to the jogging track at Bonne Bell.

The woman said she needed to get to Lakewood ASAP, and asked if I'd give her a ride. I said okay. She got in and we made small talk as we worked our way along Detroit Road. I offered to take her all the way to her exact destination, but she said that the intersection at West 140^th was "close enough." She thanked me and got out. I continued on my way.

It wasn't until I arrived at my own destination that I discovered that my wallet was missing. It had been lying on my car's bench seat. I hadn't worried about its casual placement since I hadn't intended on having company on the drive. It had been positioned on the other side of my gym bag, near the passenger seat.

The woman had a clear view of the wallet, since it was between the gym bag and her. Sometime during the drive, while my eyes were focused on the traffic ahead, she pilfered it.

I was disappointed. Though there wasn't much money involved, the hassle of replacing my driver's license irritated. And I was let down that someone I had agreed to help had taken advantage of me. But my faith in human nature wasn't shaken. I'd had far more good experiences than bad, after all.

There was the time, for example, when I was driving my Dodge down Lorain Avenue, somewhere near West 25^th Street. My trip west was -- once again -- briefly interrupted by a red light. While stopped, a woman opened the unlocked passenger door and got in. She said she urgently needed a lift.

I was startled by her unusual action and further startled by her announcement that she was on her way to drop off her rent money. She revealed that a paper sack she was carrying contained several hundred dollars in cash. As if all that weren't strange enough, she then blurted out: "You're not a weirdo, are you?"

The phrase "Lady, if I am it's too late for you to do much about it, isn't it?" rolled in front of my eyes like scrolling letters across a message board. But I restrained my humorous musing (she wouldn't have found it funny). I just muttered something like, "Uh, no. I'm not."

I was happy to help out, but stunned by the woman's quirky behavior. I drove her to her destination and waved good-bye.

Fast-forwarding to my drive home on that recent December night, I thought of my youth. It was a youth spent mostly without benefit of a family car. My dad was an alcoholic who could ill afford a vehicle -- for both financial and practical reasons (his lone act of responsibility with respect to his drinking was a refusal to drive impaired).

He died when I was twelve, leaving my mother a widow with seven children -- the oldest of whom was only thirteen. It wasn't until I reached high school that my mom obtained a driver's license and felt financially comfortable enough to purchase a used Chevy station wagon.

I remembered many an inclement day on which I would have welcomed "wheels" when I was a kid. Back then, transportation was by foot, by bicycle, or by bus. Thinking about the woman now waiting at the bus stop, I imagined that her longing surely dwarfed my own.

She waited in the dark, at the end of what was no doubt a very long day. She was weighted down with heavy bags. Her expression was one of fatigue, perhaps despair. She surely had "miles to go" before she could allow herself the luxury of rest.

I wanted to help, but I could not overcome my fear of being perceived as a predator. I ached then over my inability to help that woman. And I continue to ache over what we've become as a society.

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