We were on our way home from camping up in the Sierra Nevada foothills. A good 2 1/2 hours away from the Bay Area. Dad's driving the RV with me and the dogs inside, and Mom's towing the boat with the truck. We go to get gas at what's essentially a truck stop. I mean, all it is is a cluster of fast food restaurants, a motel, a gas station, and some place where truckers can stop and take a shower. Which is a little grody, if you ask me.
To make a long story short, I got out of the RV to take the dogs over to a strip of lawn for them to go to bathroom, and when I turned around, the RV was gone.
It didn't take long for me to accept that my parents weren't just screwing with me, and that I'd been completely abandoned.
So, it's like ninety degrees out, and I'm stuck with no money, no phone, and two dogs without leashes, some place out in the middle of the central valley. If you've been to the center of California, you'd know that it's miserable, there. For Californian standards, that is. I've been told that the entirety of some countries in the south are just the same. That must be awful.
Anyway, I borrowed a couple phones from two different people, and called both of my parents a total of nine or ten times. No answers. After that, I figured I'd leave a message the next chance I got to call.
But, guess what? I spent the next hour trying to get just one other person to let me borrow their phone.
I learned that people are jerks.
Now, I'm not so naive to think that everyone will trust me. For that reason, I sucked up my dread of social encounters and acted as polite as can be when addressing people. Didn't help in the slightest. Why I didn't just explain my situation to someone, I'm not sure. I think, at the time, I was just humiliated and wanted to keep the fact that my parents had forgotten me on the down-low.
Christ, though. There was one lady who clearly had a cellphone in a case hanging at her hip, and when I approached her, she didn't even spare me a single glance. Just said, "No," and kept walking.
To be fair, though, I looked like a gypsy.
Two dogs, sandals, dirty shorts, a dirty t-shirt, and an even dirtier white bandanna tied around my forehead. Not to mention, I hadn't bathed in a couple of days, and last I did, it was in a lake with eco-friendly shampoo, so my hair was kind of dry and ragged.
There was a man who legitimately thought that I was homeless.
He approached me and said, "Hey, buddy, you havin' a bit of trouble?"
I said yes, but before I could ask if he'd let me borrow his phone, he handed me a five-dollar bill and walked away.
I didn't even say anything.
I was just completely dumbfounded.
Since I couldn't go in the store with the dogs, a nice employee went inside with that five dollars -- might as well have used it -- and bought me a couple bottles of water. One for my dogs, one for me. Poor girls were so thirsty. The puppy kept trying to get her tongue inside the water bottle while I was pouring it into my hand for her.
Eventually, I got this rad bohemian guy to let me borrow his phone. He was crazy nice, and told me about how he'd seen people accidentally get left behind at obscure places a lot. I'm guessing he travels a lot to have so much experience with that. Anyway, my dad answered that time, said that he'd just gotten home and realized that I wasn't in the back of the RV like he thought I was, apologized like hell, and said that he'd leave right away to come get me.
So, yeah. It was an interesting experience.
