From time to time, the need to use a toilet overcomes a walker/hiker, which is why I carry toilet paper and a lighter and am always eyeing the woods. Today, however, the need kept growing, the highway was busy, and there was just nowhere to hide. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer, so I rolled the jogging stroller off the road through a ditch, and onto the edge of a farmer’s field, grabbed some TP, and sprinted for a small copse of trees. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do.
A few minutes later, I finished and started walking back to the highway, when I noticed a car had stopped. The passenger door and trunk were open.
TWO GUYS WERE STUFFING MY JOGGING STROLLER INTO THE BACK OF THEIR CAR!!
I started sprinting toward them, yelling, but they didn’t see or hear me, or were pretending they couldn’t.
Now the younger guy, the guy I think of as the Kid, had slid into the passenger seat and closed the door. The driver was strapping down the trunk, with my very own bungee cord, no less.
Now the driver was heading to the driver’s side. I kept screaming and sprinting, but it seemed they were ignoring me.
Now the driver was in his seat, the door closed. I was almost there. A single leap across the ditch just as the driver started his engine, and then one, two strides and I leapt in front of the car, slapping my hands on the hood.
My face was a mask of rage. If I wasn’t sure if they had heard or seen me to that point, whether they were just trying to steal my kit, I was sure now. They hadn’t. The fear on the Kid’s face and the way he raised his arms to protect himself couldn’t be faked. I had just scared the bejeesus out of him.
I was a man in a rage. Barely in control of myself. If that driver would have put that car in reverse, I would have been over the hood and through his windscreen reaching for his throat.
I was ready for a FIGHT!
I was ready to rip these F***ERS to pieces!
But it didn’t turn out that way. The driver threw up his hands in apology. He put the car in park and got out. With a mix of French and English, he said he thought it maybe fell off a truck. Where was I? “Toilette,” I said.
I was still snarling, still on edge, but I was calming down. They helped me get Kitty out of the trunk, and as the Kid replaced her front tire, I was happy to see that his hands were shaking.
I chatted a bit with the driver about my walk and told him that this was such an adventurous moment that it needed a photo. “Can I take your picture for Facebook?” I asked. He said yes. I didn’t really care about taking his photo. I still didn’t really trust him. I just wanted to see if he would let me take his picture in full view of his license plate. He did, so maybe everything really was on the up and up.
The whole incident rattled me. Losing all my kit wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world, certainly not bad enough to rip a man’s throat out for. It would have cost a lot of money and time to replace everything, and claiming a stolen passport would have been a pain. But I’ve endured worse in my life.
No, what has really rattled me was how close I was to losing control. Violence has not previously been in my nature. I’m always the understanding one, the one who remains calm when all hell breaks loose. People have depended on me to keep a cool head throughout my career. And yet today, I feel that if these lads had done the wrong thing when I confronted them at the car, things could have gone really badly, really quickly.
I don’t even know what the lesson learned is here. I had always locked up the stroller; except I didn’t this one time. Desperation for a toilet combined with an absence of anything to which I could lock the stroller made for more drama than was needed.