Categories: uncategorized
Date: 04 September 2007 14:03:38
I was asked for a lift.
So far so normal. But this was at 2 o'clock in the morning. And I was walking along a street. I didn't own a car, and couldn't drive, but still this woman, who I'd never met before, stopped me on the street and asked me for a lift to her home in a city that was about 60 miles away. Apparently she'd spent the evening at her daughter's house, lost track of time and missed the last train. She'd left her daughter's house, maybe in the hopes of finding a bus or some alternative transport - I can't remember if she said why. In any case, by the time she saw me, as she explained, she felt it was too late to go back to her daughter as she would be asleep. So she asked if I could give her a lift. Now I'm a mug basically. It doesn't take much to make me want to help someone. This is an impulse whose origin I do not understand at all. I distinctly recall an occasion in my childhood where I really wanted to help my big brother do something and, precisely because he understood that I wanted to help, he wouldn't let me help him, causing me a great deal of frustration. Helping people is good, but I seem to have a desire to help bordering on the obsessive-compulsive. So anyway, I wanted to help this woman. But being a student at that time I didn't know many car-owning friends, just one in fact. Stupidly I phoned him and felt bad enough at disturbing him at that time and worse at how stupid the story sounded. Fortunately he gave a categorical no, which served to clarify in my mind how wrong I was to have even asked, and is something for which all of my friends subsequently ought to give thanks at 2 o'clock every morning. Having no other suggestions I left her and headed on my way home, wondering, as I still do, whether what she had said was true, whether she was drunk or deranged, or whether I should just have crossed the road as soon as she approached. And whether or not she got home that night.