It's nearly midnight as we approached home after a day long road trip. We have me to thank for the long day as I wanted to go home rather than stay in another hotel. Flying along the road we catch a glimpse of a person, a boy, maybe 13 yrs old. He's walking along the shoulder, arms tucked inside his t-shirt, no shoes.
My husband pulls over with barely a word. Just when I think he's the most selfish person on the planet, he proves he is so far from it. He gets out to go speak with the boy. I sit in the car, cell poised to call 911. A minute later he is at the window with the boy, we're going to give him a ride.
His name is Daniel and he's not 13, he's 18. We've already stopped, can't leave him on the roadside. My husband has him empty his pockets and pats him down. He's got tobacco, cigarettes, work gloves, and a pay as you go cell phone. The phone is out of minutes. He has no wallet.
During this inspection he reveals that his brother has his knife and his medication. We are starting to regret stopping. We don't have all the seats in so he has to sit on our luggage. "Beats walking 2 more hours," he says. I watch the GPS in the car counting down the miles until we have delivered him to his chosen location.
We make small talk with the guy as we make our way. To the question "what happened to your shoes" the answer was that he had had a fight with his brother who kicked him out of the car without all of his stuff. This did nothing to explain why he wasn't wearing shoes in the car. The fight, apparently, was about how his brother's girl was hitting on him and he indicated that he wasn't interested in her. The brother was then insulted that he didn't find his girlfriend attractive. Yeah, you know, the typical brotherly argument. I suspect the real story was that he had been robbed during some sort of already illegal activity.
He went on and on about how he would be leaving tomorrow for Florida because there was just too much drama in the place where he lived. The upside of Florida was that he would be near his daughter who is three. He also shared that he had 3 other kids in addition to the one in Florida. He had custody of one of them for a while until he got arrested but he's on probation now so he can probably get the kid back now. No mention of what the probation was for but based on the oversharing with total strangers, I'd guess something drug related. Drug possession probably. So, yes, there in the back of my car with my children is an 18 year old drug addict with a criminal record.
He reminded me of many of the students attending the school where I work. Most of them are mentally ill and self medicate with illegal drugs. The entire ride he continued to entertain us with the story of how he hadn't been paid at his lawn crew job in 2 weeks, how he was practically homeless, how his fiance had broken up with him because he had no money. He mentioned the Florida move multiple times. "Gonna stay with my grandma, got a job lined up, if I get paid tomorrow, I'm outta here!" It was the over exaggerated posturing typical of all 18 year olds but made worse by whatever abuse, neglect, and mental illness this kid had endured.
After the longest 15 minutes of my life, we finally arrived at intersection where he'd asked to be dropped off. He'd said he had a cousin he was going to stay with. My husband assumed that we would be dropping him off at a house on the street and started to ask about how far down the house was. I opened my mouth to start to say that we were dropping him off in this parking lot. I was sure as hell not going down the street into the pitch black dangerous neighborhood at 12:30 am. The kid
beat me to the punch saying that we could just drop him at the liquor store. He thanked us stating that not many people would have bothered to stop and give him a ride. It was the most realistic and true thing that he'd said since he got in the car.
We watched him head toward the store rolling a cigarette as he walked away. I realized, there was no cousin. There was probably no brother either. Something had happened which had resulted in this kid being miles from home, wallet less and shoe-less. I shudder to think about what the something was. Whatever the kid had endured, he had been completely nonplussed by the situation. He didn't appear upset or surprised or traumatized by the events of his evening that led up to his barefoot stroll down the side of the freeway.
I reflected on the fact that this wasn't the first kid I'd picked up on the side of the road. A few months prior, I had noticed a kid walking to school who had gotten spooked by a strange old homeless guy walking behind him down the road. The guy was likely harmless but he was pretty freaky looking and had started walking in the same direction as the kid. Poor thing kept looking behind him with fear in his eyes so I showed him my ID badge as I was a teacher in the school district he attended and he got in my car. I drove him to school and called the school safety officer to let him know the situation. Meanwhile another driver who had witnessed the situation had called the cops to deal with the homeless guy. I had been shaken by the whole thing as I have kids and I pictured how scared my own children would have been in that situation. At the same time I felt good about what I had done. I had been part of the "village" that it takes to raise a child.
This time, I didn't have the same good vibe. I felt lucky that nothing bad had happened given that our kids were in the car. Watching that kid in the parking lot as we pulled away, I realized that we hadn't really helped him much at all. Sure, we got him off the freeway but we definitely hadn't dropped him off in a safer location. Instead of going home to his family with a hair raising tale of his evening, he was likely going to buy some drugs and get high on the street. I started to wonder whether I should've gone with my first instinct which was to call 911 and report the kid, let them handle it. He was on probation and probably wasn't supposed to be out wandering around and they might've gotten to the bottom of what had really happened to him. But what's done is done and I can only hope that we taught him that in his world where he had encountered so many shitty people, there were a few nice ones.
