Road Memory

I’m the point of post-road trip where I am being bombarded with flashbacks from my time on the road. Case in point: this afternoon while driving down the Nimitz freeway, I saw a woman walking down the shoulder of the road. Big hoop earrings, Raiders colors, and a pissed off strut that seemed to scream “I just got in a huge fight with my manfriend and promptly got out of the car so as not to be near him.” Traffic was heavy, so people weren’t whizzing by, but I can’t fathom that her placement was particularly safe.

“Should we call the cops?” I asked Brian.

And that’s when the memory hit me: While we were leaving New Orleans, Megan and I were driving down a highway at not the slowest of speeds. The roads were reasonably clear, the weather crisp, and then, in lane three of our five lane road, was a kid just haphazardly walking with his backpack. You’d have thought he’d walked out the door to school and gotten lost, but even the most confused of people don’t tend to end up on a kamikaze mission of sorts.

With zero hesitation, Megs and I called the police to at least alert them that an adolescent pedestrian was scaring drivers (and likely himself) on the freeway. The woman I spoke with had a thick southern accent, and I must have sounded slightly foreign myself as it took me awhile to get the information across.

Not sure what happened to the kid, or the woman for that matter. Sometimes all you can do is try to help.

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