The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
~Bertrand Russell
A few evenings ago one of the last Media /Elwyn trains of the night let me off at the Wallingford Train Station and I was enjoying the walk up East Possum Hollow Road, a sleepy little street. It leads to Route 252, and the Pantry Food Mart where I park my car because there are never any spots in the Septa parking lot. I had approached Possum Hollow slowly from the station because there are no sidewalks and I don’t like brushing up against the hulking, militant machinery that we call cars. The few that were left in the lot had all sped away, and I was almost reveling in the eeriness of the tranquility—no traffic, no lights, and voluminous plant life lining the pedestrian walk out of which someone could at any moment leap.
Evidently, I was deeper in my imaginings than I realized because I didn’t see the vehicle coming toward me. “Excuse me madam, do you need a ride?” With a start it registered that a man was stopped in the middle of the road, leaning out the window of his Jeep or S.U.V. and making a most improbable gesture. A slim, well-groomed, forty-something man who, in the shadows of the scene, looked downright stately. “No thank you, my car is up ahead” I said. “But thank you for offering.” “Okay” he said and continued down the road while I, reflexively, shouted out again “Thank you!” He turned into the first driveway, backed out and drove by me to wherever he was originally going. And I was just plain perplexed to be alive.
Only moments prior to this stranger’s materialization I was thinking of how endearing it was that, at times when I did need a ride, one friend would refuse to pick me up at the Wallingford Station, telling me to meet him at the Swarthmore Station instead. He thought that East Possum Hollow Road was like a scene from Freddy movies. “Maybe I’ve seen too many horror films,” he would explain, “but that area just gives me the creeps.”
I now felt a much more indistinguishable dread.
When did ministrations become threatening? What role did the brainwashing effects of Hollywood play in my reaction? Had I acquiesced to some form of culturally mandated mind control in feeling alarmed, or was my response actually a sign of wisdom? And what year would I have to travel back in time to so as to think only, “What a gentleman, how sweet of him,” as opposed to “Is he a killer and should I be running?”
I would like to imagine that, if my car weren’t up the road that night, I would have taken the ride. That the benefit would outweigh the risk of proving that, in this wayward era of man slaughterers and massive fear, there could be a fellow magnanimous enough and brave enough and irreverent enough to defy common logic and offer pure solicitude to a woman walking down a desolate road late one spring night. I would be the lady who, in daring to accept such an archaic and wild gesture, believes in unlikely heroes—those who live without guile or perverse motive. This would not be a dumb, naïve, fatuous, or suicidal move on my part, but rather a refusal to submit to the ideology that suspicion should be the norm. It would be nothing other than my own personal uprising against the tyranny of the majority.
I would allow the fellow to drop me off at my real address, as opposed to, for the sake of security, one a house or two away from my own. And in the five minute ride we would share our names as well as an uncanny familiarity. I would express gratitude and awe and perhaps even say, “That is the first time I have been called madam. Do you use that word often?” Which would begin a conversation about his being from another country or time entirely, a rural province of France, perhaps, or the moon, or the 18th century, and how no man there or then would think twice about changing course to offer a woman walking along a deserted, unlit road transport home. “In fact,” he would say, “it would be preposterous not to, my lady.” The conversation would turn desultory in course and we would sit in his Jeep that may as well be a horse and carriage talking the night away, but he would eventually bring us back to the original topic. “Which came first,” he would ask after a pause, “people unnecessarily distrusting one another, or people becoming too dangerous to trust?”
Imagine.
Wrens on a Wire by Amanda Varrella 