The other day as I scampered the half-mile between bus stop and work, I looked up briefly from White Teeth to see that the vehicle leaving a driveway for a road was indeed going to stop for me the pedestrian. He was. I noted briefly, "Oo, white van--must be a sniper," and was back in the book when, 20 feet later, I heard a voice.
The driver said, "Hey, I know you! You're the lady who waits for the bus on X Avenue near Y."
"Yep--that's me."
"Do you work here?"
"A little farther on," I evaded.
"I drive out here all the time--I could give you a ride."
I laughed, thanking him, turning away. How do I handle that? He didn't set off any warning bells--older, decent grammar, probably the last of the decent-to-strangers generation (sniper's van aside).
This morning as I stood at the bus stop, the white van pulled up and the passenger side window came down and the driver offered me a ride. I had not thought of what to say; what would I say? Smiling I hoped self-deprecatingly, "I am sorry, sir, but I really can't accept a ride from a stranger."
He nodded, waving and pulling away. "I got no problem with that."
I do though. If people don't accept kindnesses from strangers, strangers will stop offering them. The chances that he would harm or even threaten me are, I'd wager, slim to none, as are, nonetheless, the chances that I would get into a stranger's car. He was just being nice. I hate that I can't accept that nicety.
I feel like a heel.
In the past three months, two different people I work with have got engaged. In both cases, the man asked the woman's father's permission before asking her to marry him. What the hell? Long Island, Virginia, I get that some things persist in some regions and cultures longer than in others. Both men asked the father, not the parents.
That the men asked the fathers before asking the women makes no sense to me, yet only as I began to write this did it occur to me that it should strike me as equally stupid that the men asked the women instead of vice versa. That that it didn't shows the mores I have kept.