I was in my local (name the store) the other day, when I saw a man who looked strange. He seemed to be following me. So I turned down an aisle that I didn't really need to go down and sure enough, he turned down the same aisle. A few aisles later, I turned again, and he was getting closer to me. I clasped onto my purse a little tighter and started looking around to see if anyone else might be noticing, but then a woman who seemed to know the man was coming at me from the other side of the aisle, and I just knew they were trying to abduct me. I didn't call the police or take any photos with my very convenient phone/photo device, but I came home and posted about it on social media.
You've probably read this story a thousand times by now.
Or some version of it where someone leaves a flyer on your windshield wiper. Or doses your door handle with drugs while you're inside the mall. And not a single one of these stories has ever been corroborated by an actual police department, and yet, they scare us anyway. That's the goal.
Here's a story that's actually true:
The other night, I was coming home from work and saw a young girl (13-14 years old) walking her dog down my street. Wanting to make sure they passed safely before I backed into my driveway, I pulled over toward the curb and waited on her to pass. As soon as I stopped my car, she stopped like a deer in headlights and just stared at me. I attempted to gesture that I was waiting to back into my driveway and wanted her to keep walking, but every time I raised my hand, she frantically shook her head "No" and her eyes got even wider. My heart broke as I wondered who made her so afraid of this world.
Little girl, I just want us both to get home safely. Please keep walking your dog so I can go in my house and feed mine.
This sort of thing is happening more and more in our world. I remember when I was a kid and it was just seeming to get started. Back in the day, we ran around half the time and our parents didn't even know where we were. Then some kid went missing on the other side of the country, and all of a sudden, it seems we all had a leash on. Then, we got obsessed with true crime, and the whole world became full of monsters.
We are so afraid of each other, especially persons we don't know (when, in fact, it is the persons we do know who are most likely to hurt us the most deeply). We live our lives scared of chance encounters because "you just never know."
But here's another story that's actually true:
A decade or so ago, I was traveling by myself - a 30-something female - through the wide-open countryside of Illinois. Due to my unfamiliarity with the roads I was on, I had been in desperate need of a restroom for approximately, oh, 40 miles, when I finally came upon a lone gas station literally in the middle of corn fields. There was nothing - and no one - else around. But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
This gas station was janky, and that's putting it lightly. The rows, if you could even call them such a thing, were so cramped you had to shimmy sideways through them. When I walked in, no one was there, but then a man emerged from the back somewhere. He was a very tall white guy with very thick dreadlocks and a moderate country drawl. I asked for a restroom, and he laughed and asked me how long I'd been on this road, then pointed me toward the back, where the passages were even narrower and a thick grey paint covered an office door and a small bathroom door. The bathroom also apparently served as a broom closet. (The toilet, though, was surprisingly clean.) But it was every bit the kind of place you'd see in an episode of Criminal Minds.
After using the facilities, I went back out and chatted with the guy for a bit and he turned out to be one of the nicest, friendliest guys I'd ever met. Genuinely happy, genuinely glad to be of service, to be in the right place at the right time. I walked away from that encounter thinking deep in my heart something that I have known to be true ever since:
Most persons really are just good persons.
And the Bible confirms this. Ecclesiastes tells us, God made people good. He really did. The world breaks some of us, but at our core, God has made us good.
As much as the world tries to scare us, as much as it wants us to be afraid of one another (and of everything, really), the truth is much different. The world is, overwhelmingly, a good place full of good persons.
So just keep walking your dog. Okay?
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