Thursday, July 27, 2006
what would you do?
This morning, on my way to my doctor's office, I experienced an interesting (and brief!) encounter that I didn't handle as well as I would have liked. I was on Galbraith Road, stopped at an intersection. I saw a woman standing on the sidewalk talking to someone in the car in front of me. I didn't realise it soon enough to get away, but she was asking for something. By the time I realised what was going on, she was at my passenger window. I thought she was asking for money because she was telling me some story about needing to get up the road for her kids to do something about a will of some sort. While I was digging around looking for some change to give her for bus fare, she turned back to get her stuff and that's when I realised that she wanted me to give her a ride. This caused me to freak out and drive away real fast. But I immediately started to feel guilty. I mean, the chances are far greater that this poor lady needed a ride than that she was going to carjack me, or worse. So what would you do?
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As someone who has worked in community mental health, I would have done the exact same thing as you. You don't know what is going on with someone, and you have to put your safety first. Giving her bus fare would have been totally appropriate, in my opinion, and the fact that she only wanted a ride and not bus fare seems like a red flag to me. Maybe it would have been better to explain that you were only able to give her change and not a ride, but the panic moment is totally understandable. A car is a closed-in space where you can't protect yourself.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe I'm just a jerk. But I think you did the right thing.
I completely agree with Rachel, for all of the same reasons. You have to be really careful about who you let in your car. I also understand the just wanting to drive away-its just weird in this day of cell phones to need a ride-couldn't she have ased you to call someone? What frustrates me in such situations is that we aren't really given the freedom to do nice things like this because there truely are so many people who have gotten seriously hurt or killed by people in the name of trying to be nice. I wouldn't feel bad-you had a red flag go off, and your instincts took over, and I think you should always trust yourself when you feel like something isn't right.
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