So, why don’t we pick up hitch hikers anymore? Why don’t we stop to help a stranded motorist? Lack of trust? Fear of being sued? Fear of being killed? Seeing one too many movies about an insane criminal at the lonely roadside just waiting to terrorize yet another innocent victim? The problem is not just our fears that prevent us from helping someone else… What about if someone stops to help us?
It’s not just the hitch hikers that we distrust; we may even more so distrust the “good” Samaritan who stops to help. Good people drive past. Smart people never stop. So that only leaves the crazies and the perverts. How do we know that our “good” Samaritan is really good? Maybe they’re not. How can we be sure? We can’t! In the late ‘90’s the movie “Breakdown” was released. I saw this move once. I will never watch this movie again. I can’t. I know it’s “just” a movie. I know it’s all fake. It doesn’t matter. I can’t watch it. Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan play the part of a young innocent couple stranded along a lonely stretch of Arizona highway. J.T. Walsh perfectly plays the role of a trucker (a lying, crazy, psycho, kidnapper) who stops to help. I can’t tell you the rest; it terrifies me.
The title of the movie – Breakdown – is I’m sure meant to refer to a car that broke down at the edge of the road. However, I would suggest that “Breakdown” should not refer to stranded motorists, but rather to our society that has broken down. Something is wrong. Once we step out of our house and into our car we enter a world where we can’t stop to help, nor do we want others to do the same. We must get to our destination as rapidly as possible lest the fate befall us to be stranded in a morally broken down world. We pass by stranded strangers and if we find ourselves stranded, we keep our windows rolled up tight and tell anyone who stops to lend a hand that help is on the way. I don’t need the help of a “suspicious” Samaritan. I’ve got my cell phone to call for help. I’ve got Onstar to help direct the police to my location. Even if I’m in a crash… there is still no need for some stranger to stop and inquire; Onstar will call the police automatically in the event of an airbag deployment.
I don’t even trust the policeman that stops to assist. How do I know that he is not some crazy Robo-cop, that is going to drag me out of my vehicle and brutally beat me in the middle of the road? In the last year, I have known of two such cases, one in Oklahoma and other in Dearborn, Michigan, where officers involved in a traffic stop beat the drivers so severely that the men had to be hospitalized. What were the drivers doing wrong? They were slipping into Diabetic shock, and the officers mistakenly thought the drivers were drunk!
Manners and common decency are broken down. The boundaries of behavior behind which we used to comfortably dwell are now broken down and we are co-mingled with the “crazies”! What are we to do? The answer my friend is quite simple. We are going to do the same thing that our fathers did. We are going to die!!! Oh, wait… before we do that, there is some last work to be done.
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