Stranger Danger

I got one of those annoying forwarded e-mails the other day. This one advised women to keep their car panic button and a can of wasp spray handy to avoid violent assault.

The author suggested that a woman could press her car key panic button in a parking garage or in her bedroom if she suspects an attacker is near. The blaring car alarm would catch attention and most likely scare an intruder away. Also, a can of wasp spray can be used like mace to temporarily blind an assailant from long range.

I had to admit, the tips were so sensible they begged the question, “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

On the other hand, is there a realistic need for me to have my thumb constantly poised on a panic button or to blind anyone with wasp spray? Better safe than sorry, they say, but has our culture become paranoid?

As a freshman at Miami University in tiny ivy covered Oxford, Ohio, I was utterly naïve. Violent crime seemed to me some far off rarity that happened in New York City or Los Angeles.

So when a strange man with a thick foreign accent offered me a ride when I was stranded at the Cincinnati bus station, I took it.

I was coming home from my cousin’s wedding in Louisville, Kentucky, and due to some kind of mechanical failure, my bus was late arriving in Cincinnati, causing me to miss the one daily connection to Oxford. I used my last coins at the pay phone trying to call my roommates to see if they could make the 50 mile drive to pick me up, but no one answered.

I sat in the dirty vinyl bus station chairs and glanced around the terminal. Realizing I had to wait for the next day’s bus, my mind raced, “I’m out of money. No one knows where I am. I have to spend the night in the bus station. What am I going to do?”

I began to cry.

Mid sob, a thin man with a brown face and a thick Indian accent tapped me on the shoulder.

“Es-cuse me, Miss, can I help you?” he said.

I was so relieved to have some kind of human contact and looked up at the man with tears flowing from my eyes.

“I missed my bus back to school!” I sobbed.

He inquired where I needed to go, and after a moment of thought, offered to drive me to Oxford.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “It takes about an hour.” But he agreed, and I followed him out of the grungy bus station to his car ÔÇô a brown Ford Fairlane with no distinguishing features. The stranger closed the passenger’s seat door after I willingly got in with my back pack.

I didn’t even know the way to Oxford, and could only tell him to go north. He headed out of the city on unfamiliar roads, apparently looking for signs along the way.

Being a typical bubble-headed Freshman, I filled the nervous silence with chatter, telling the strange foreigner all about my life at Miami of Ohio.

Soon, the last traces of suburban sprawl were in the rear view mirror, and we were surrounded by the vast corn fields of south western Ohio. There were not many cars on the road; no one really noticed the plain brown sedan with the strange man and the 18-year-old girl.

No one ÔÇô not my roommates, my parents, my aunt in Kentucky — had any idea that I was in the middle of a corn field, locked in an unmarked car with a strange man.

It would take hours for them to realize that I wasn’t on that Greyhound bus. The stranger had plenty of time to hide my lifeless body in a corn field and get back to the anonymity of the city, and his secret life as a serial killer.

But that didn’t happen.

“Thanks so much for the ride, Mister,” I said to the stranger as he pulled up to my dorm. I offered to run inside and get money to pay for gas, but he politely refused, only asking me to point out somewhere he could pick up a hamburger to go.

Without the need of wasp spray, my faith in human kind was still utterly blind, and I gratefully waved good-bye as the stranger pulled away.

So what am I saying? Should we unlock our doors, unzip our purses and tell our teenage daughters to take up hitchhiking from city bus terminals?

Probably not a good idea, but who wants to live with the pessimistic assumption that all strangers are dangerous? Sure, there are a few wackos out there who make it advisable for us to buy elaborate alarm systems and carry pepper spray, but as we protect ourselves, let’s not chastise the entire human race.

Besides, without the kindness of strangers, I might still be stuck at a bus station in Ohio.

Related Articles

• Wasp Spray could save your Life! (spreadinformation.wordpress.com)
• Strangers drive 700 miles to return car (upi.com)
• Taking “Stranger Danger” Too Far (reason.com)