I suppose if my thumbs were monstrously huge, I might feel destined to hitchhike all over the country like Sissy in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Then again, I have a higher sense of self-preservation that keeps me from getting in cars with strangers.

I remember driving along I-45 in Houston when I was in college – 3am, rain is starting, and there’s a man with his thumb out, hoping for a ride. I felt a brief empathy, thinking about what it would feel like to be stuck on this road in the middle of the night, about to hit the mix master, where it’s a little harder to walk along the freeway, especially in the rain. I’m going the same direction, I thought, and it would certainly be a nice gesture.

But it was just a flash before my mind said, “Skinny little girls don’t pick up hitchhikers.” Especially skinny little girls who don’t own guns and who’ve never even been in a fist fight with another skinny girl. I don’t actually have to try it to know it’s not a good idea.

Trust is a tricky thing. I’m a glass half full kind of person, who tends to think that people are mostly good, that most people on the road are just trying to get from point A to point B safely. But I’m not so delusional to think there aren’t bad people out there, who might find joy in hurting or killing me. So the question is, who do you put your trust in? I’m not going to trust solely to probability and statistics.

But if I did find myself on the road, needing to trust to the kindness of strangers, I like to think my instincts would keep me safe like a seasoned traveler who just gets a bad vibe and goes in the other direction.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under road tripping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.