The Time a Somewhat Drunken Crazy Lady Jumped Into My Car

I'll have to hitchhike with the other hand.

I didn't post last week. My niece stayed with us for a week and I didn't have much time to do much of anything. Right now I'm blogging shortly after the first of what will be two surgeries for my carpal tunnel syndrome. There's really not much to say about the surgery other than it seemed to go well, and I have to type this post with just one hand.

So, I'll return to blogging with a brief anecdote about my only notable experience with a hitchhiker.

Though I haven't read any data on hitchhiking, I'm guessing that the practice has been in steep decline over the past several decades, along with other pastimes like playing with Tinkertoys or making 8-track mixtapes. There are two memories from my childhood related to hitchhiking:

• There was an episode of CHiPs where these girls would hitchhike on the highway and then rob the schlubs who'd pick them up, until one driver recognized their guns as water pistols. Then the driver, who was justifiably pissed off, drove around at high speeds to scare the girls until they flagged down Ponch or Jon to pull over the car.
• Some warning that we received back in elementary school about The Perils of Hitchhiking. I remember getting a number of these kinds of lectures, and they all ended with a gruesome result of bad behavior, like the tale of the kid who stuck his head out the school bus window, only to be decapitated by a telephone pole. I don't know if my recollection is accurate, but I remember the hitchhiking parable ending with a young woman having her legs cut off. I can't imagine why I remember the hitchhiking caveat this way — perhaps we were too young to learn about rape — but for years I always assumed that hitchhiking = losing your legs, as if there were fleet of Dodge Darts and AMC Pacers manned by creepy dudes with chainsaws.

I've seen actual, thumb-in-the-air hitchhiking maybe twice in my life, but I've often considered picking up people walking on the street, because it's an easy pay-it-forward kind of deed (since you're driving in that direction anyway) and because I know how good it feels to get into a car to save the time and shoe leather that it would take to reach my destination. I've never hitchhiked myself, but I've been spotted and picked up by neighbors or even my own father while walking on the streets before I got my license or first car. I never actually tried to pick up a stranger, though, because I'm worried that the men I'd pick up would try to overpower me and steal my car, while the women would think I was going to try to molest them or, worse, they'd also try to overpower me and steal my car.

So I was surprised when I found myself giving a stranger a ride home...because I didn't exactly give her permission to hop in my car.


MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME...IN MY CAR!
I had just stopped at a red light after leaving my parents' neighborhood. This was a couple of years before I married the woman who became Mrs. The Anthony Show. I was alone, and I think I was driving to 5pm mass. I do remember it was one of those gray-cold winter days that seem colder because Christmas is long over and the chill no longer evokes the anticipation of a gift-related holiday.

So, I am at a red light, and a sound draws my attention to the right, where a young stocky woman is raising her fist and yelling in my direction what seems like a question. In a move that I'll always regret, I lower my passenger window to get clarification of her query, all the while wondering how anyone can stand to brave the elements for more than 10 seconds, when she reaches in to unlock my car door and opens it and starts speaking very quickly: something about a boyfriend and a fight.

Then she sits in the passenger seat. The light has turned green, and there are cars behind me, so I start driving.

Not even close to this.

I notice that her eyes are glassy and my car suddenly smells like the day after a keg party. If this were a movie with, say, Topher Grace behind the wheel, the woman would probably be portrayed by one of those interchangeable twentysomething actresses that appeared on a CW or Nickelodeon show five years ago. In real life, the woman was probably my age but had the kind of body that was best suited for harvesting beets. I mention this not because I'm shallow and materialistic — though I am both of these — but so you'll understand that there was absolutely no potential for this possible carjacking to turn into a rom-com...

...even when she stopped in the middle of her rant about her abusive boyfriend who kicked her out of his apartment to walk home in the freezing cold to turn to me and say, "Hey, you wanna party?"

I didn't want to party — not with her, at least — but I told her I'd drive her home. Home was Central Islip, a not-so-great area some eight miles away.

I wish I could remember some of the specifics of our conversation, but it was mostly me asking her why she'd go out with a guy who treated her so bad, while she made excuses and revealed other tidbits of her life to make me conclude that she wasn't much of a prize, either. All the while, I warily watched her out of the corner of my eye in case she attempted something, like pulling out a shiv or vomiting.

When we approached the street where she lived, I suggested that I drop her off at the nearest gas station — by this point I'd figured she wasn't completely psychotic, but I harbored a not-quite-irrational fear that there was some sort of neighborhood ambush waiting for me in her driveway.

She got out of my car at the nearby Sunoco and thanked me. Fortunately she didn't try to hug me or worse.

I drove to the apartment of a friend who lived nearby, and told him the whole story, just so I could confirm to myself that it actually happened. My friend asked if the woman was hot, I said no, and that made the whole story a lot less interesting.

Since then, I haven't had another opportunity to pick up a hitchhiker. But from now on, I'll ask any potential hitchers to explain their business without lowering my window first.