Stranger Danger

I rarely make stupid choices. I’m meticulous at measuring outcomes and risk assessing before making decisions. But when I do make those not-so-favourable choices, they are truly the stupidest!

Let’s rewind to lowrise jeans, doubled-up tank tops, embellished denim, and crop tops. Yes, I’m talking about the early 2000s, though those fashion trends are randomly back. It was 2006 and I was fresh off of a trip to Guatemala. And by trip I mean a Christian missionary trip where we helped build a retaining wall for a school in an area prone to mudslides. It was an experience I cherish to this day.

But back to the story of making stupid decisions…

I had just moved back home with my parents after a year of being at Bible College and working in the gorgeous, mountainous town of Canmore, Alberta. And I was deeply lonely. All my high school friends had moved on with their lives, all my Bible College friends lived far away, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. A typical, lost 19-year-old.

“On this particularly cold day, I happened to leave my common sense at home while my little sister and I drove to the nearby city. We ended up going to Best Buy and as I was looking through the computer aisle, an attractive and definitely-my-type guy approached me. We will call him Lieutenant, since he was in the military and for context, soldiers being in the city was common as there was a military base nearby. ”

Lieutenant and I began chatting and the small talk quickly turned into a conversation about life and faith. He asked if I wanted to go grab a coffee and I mentioned my sister was with me. He immediately offered to buy us both a drink. So, my 14 year-old sister joined Lieutenant and I on a date-but-not-really-a-date.

Let me stop there for a second and bring you into my 19-year-old mind. I was naive. Sometimes I still feel like I am when it comes to men. But back then, if a guy showed me any attention, I never assumed they were interested in me. I was insecure and believed no guy would ever be interested in me. I also rarely questioned people’s motives and took them at face-value. So, when Lieutenant started a conversation with me, and we had shared values and faith, I truly believed God had sent me a platonic friend to answer my prayers about being lonely. And because I over spiritualized it and believed it was a sign from God, all amount of wisdom and discernment went straight out the door!

“This will help explain what happened next…

We had been speaking for a while in Starbucks when he asked if I had found what I needed at Best Buy. I hadn’t and mentioned we were going to go to Staples across the city to try and find this mysterious item that I cannot remember. He mentioned he was going there too and offered to drive, so my sister and I got into his very nice vehicle.”

Yes, you heard me.

To this day, I remember pulling the car door closed and thinking, “I just got into a car with a stranger. I just got into a stranger's car with my little sister!”

I sat there completely frozen. Remember, it was the early 2000s and flip phones had just come out. One of which I didn’t have. As my anxiety rose, I just prayed he wasn’t a psycho and trusted that God would protect me from my utter lack of common sense.

So, what did I do after we got to Staples? Found the item I needed and got back in the car with this stranger who I hoped was going to take us back across the city to where my Lumina was waiting (or maybe I was still driving the family Station Wagon?).

“When I said stupid… I meant stupid. Why did I get back in the car? I have no clue. And I still shake my head over it all!”

Thankfully, Lieutenant did drop my sister and I off back at Starbucks. With anxiety streaming through every ounce of my body, Lieutenant asked for my number or email. No shocker here, I gave him my email and got out of the car. I remember my sister being blissfully unaware of the danger I had just put her in, and me thanking God that we weren’t just kidnapped.

I can’t remember how my parents found out and I’m pretty positive I didn’t tell them, but my money is on my little sister. When in doubt, blame the younger sibling! The wrath that I experienced as a goodie goodie was enough fear to put anyone straight. I wasn’t used to being in trouble, but boy was I in trouble. My mom walked me through every possible worst-case scenario that could have happened from my stupid choices. Those potential scenarios were vivid and terrifying!

After things died down a little in the house, I patiently waited as our dial up internet loaded (no high-speed yet), and checked my emails. Lieutenant had emailed! I wish I could say I was excited to get an email from this “new friend”, but the fear of God had been put into me by my mother, so by the time I read his email, I read it with the mindset that he had sinister intent. So much so that when I read the sentence, “I think you are so hot,” I felt sick. My mom even said that only bad boys (and not the good kind) use “hot” to describe women.

“As I cried over my stupid decisions and felt so much guilt and shame over putting my sister at risk, I emailed the Lieutenant back basically saying I didn’t want anything to do with him.”

Just for clarity, I have never gotten into a stranger's car again. However, that was not the last time I spoke to Lieutenant!

Three years later…

I received an email from him. I was at a Christian University at the time (also an overachiever in my faith as it turns out) and he was somewhere overseas with the military. He reached out because I had been on his mind. It honestly was really sweet. A friend of mine who had been in the military encouraged me to email him back because, in his words, “it can be really hard over there.” So, we began emailing back and forth sharing little tidbits about life and he shared about his unit. It felt like a Nicholas Sparks novel as we penned our lives through email.

Then, at one point, he stopped emailing. I worried if he was okay and actually spent time googling to see if there was anything in the news, but didn’t find anything. This was also around the time that hotmail was going out of fashion. Why is this significant? Because I ended up having to change my email after a hack. This meant I lost most of my contacts and all my emails that were associated with hotmail. Inevitably, Lieutenant and I lost touch.

And thus ends the once of the stupidest decisions I have ever made that weirdly turned into an almost romance. If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, you are likely used to stories like this, with unexpected twists and turns. Is my life a rom com? A sitcom? Or maybe it is more of a drama? Likely the latter, but I throw in some humour to make things interesting!

“Until next week for another meetCUTE, stay safe and don’t get into cars with strangers! ”

Editor’s Note: My sister reminded me of this memory just this week. We were laughing so hard about how naive we both were and how bad things could have been. At the exact same time, I kind of think of this story about Lieutenant warmly. 

We were just two lonely people, wandering the aisles of Best Buy, trying to figure out our lives.