Trusting a Good Samaritan

I am about to admit to having done something stupid. Like, seriously stupid. Like I-could-have-been-killed stupid. Earlier today, I did something that no one should ever do.

Earlier today, I missed a bus.

This isn't unusual. Buses have schedules, but rarely keep to them perfectly, so I try to arrive at a bus stop early, in case the bus is early. Today, I was merely "on time." I waited at the bus stop for what felt like quite a while, checking the time periodically, until I decided that I must have missed the bus. It must have been a few minutes early, and I could either wait for the next one, which would take about half an hour, or I could just walk to where the bus would take me, which would only take me about as long.

I decided to walk. Fresh air. Exercise. It was a little muddy in some places, and a fallen tree blocked my path at one point, but it was an adventure. And walking felt good anyway. It felt like I was making progress.

Until the bus drove by.

It hadn't been early. It had been late. About ten minutes late. In fact, it was so far off-schedule that it took me a moment to recognise what I was seeing. There was the bus I was supposed to be on. And it was slowing down.

There was a bus stop half a block away from me, and there was a man standing at it.

I ran. This, also, was not unusual for me. I've narrowly missed busses before, ran like mad, passed lines of cars stuck at traffic lights, and ended up catching the bus. Once, I had ran several blocks, through the rain, to catch a bus at this very bus stop.

But I did not catch this bus. The bus driver might not have seen me. Or he or she might have decided that, already being ten minutes behind schedule, he or she could not afford another delay. I don't blame the bus driver for not waiting for me. Admittedly, I did make an angry remark about how off-schedule the bus was, but really, I was just mad at myself for having chosen to walk rather than wait.

At this point, I had no choice but to walk, until I was offered another choice.

A car pulled up to the sidewalk. Through the window, the driver told me that he had seen what had happened. He expressed sympathy and offered to drive me ahead of the bus and drop me off at a bus stop so I could catch it.

I have faith in humanity. I was tired of walking. I felt ready for something to go right in my life. I felt that if God offered me a miracle, it would be disrespectful of me to throw it away. I felt that if a Good Samaritan was willing to go out of his way to help me, a total stranger, the least I could do to thank him was to accept his help. And I was carrying a readily-accessible pocketknife, just in case.

I got in the car.

This was stupid. This was exceptionally stupid. This was I-could-have-been-killed-or-kidnapped-and-no-one-would-have-even-known-I-was-missing-for-at-least-an-hour stupid. Fortunately, my dad knew I was on my way to his house, and that it should only take me about an hour from the time I left home to get there, so if I didn't show up for an hour or so after I should have, he probably would have called me, or at least texted me, and if I didn't respond, he might have started to suspect that something was wrong. With luck, my blunder would have been discovered within a few hours. But that was a VERY big "if." If anything had gone wrong, if the driver turned out not to have been a Good Samaritan, but a bad one, I would have been in DEEP trouble. I had made an incredibly bad decision. It's a mistake that I will not, I pray, ever make again. I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT DO WHAT I DID. DO NOT GET IN A STRANGER'S CAR. EVER.

But it's really too bad that we have to be that careful, that sceptical, that cynical. The driver turned out to be a genuinely nice guy. He was a Good Samaritan. He took me to the bus stop, just as he said he would. He had done an act of service for the good of mankind, and I was his grateful (and lucky!) beneficiary.

It's too bad there aren't more people like that. Or rather, it's too bad there are so many people who are not like that. It's too bad that there are some "Bad Samaritans" who claim to be sympathetic, just to get people's guards down, and then take advantage of those whom they had offered to help. It's too bad that it's such a terribly foolish decision to trust people.

I wish we lived in a world where we could trust Good Samaritans as much as I did earlier today. But we don't live in such a celestial world, and we can't afford to trust people that much. We can thank them, we can ask God to bless them, and in some cases, if we are extremely careful, we can accept some forms of help from them.

But we must never trust them.

Please, for your sake, for my sake, and for the sakes of everyone else who cares about you, think. Be careful. And never trust a "Good" Samaritan.