For the Love of Hitchhikers

I know I'm not supposed to pick up hitchhikers. Really, I do.

I also know that I'm not supposed to kiss on the first date, or think babies look like aliens, or wear colored bras under white shirts, or order pizza at midnight, or curse, or stay up late, or forget to brush my teeth, or lots of other stuff that somebody - at some point in history - decided are inappropriate things for a nice young lady to do.

But full-circle-style, I love me some hitchhikers. Luckily, for the sake of my "nice young lady" status, I have found a loophole in "the rules" regarding hitchhikers. It's dangerous to pick up hitchhikers, especially for a solo woman. Check. I totally get that. But...what if they're not holding a thumb out? Doesn't the thumb in the wind define the status of hitchhikerness...a la Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues? Bingo. It's all about the thumb. No thumb, no hitchhiker, no problem!

Tonight I was driving home from my nice stable job in my nice sporty car, looking forward to a glass of nice red wine on the patio of my nice little apartment that I share with my nice little cat...when I saw them. Their bulging backpacks, their determined strides, their messy hair...it all tugged at my heartstrings and made me yearn for a life that was once my own. Once before...and once again, most certainly. But for now, it's a life that I've put on hold, and one that I admire with Nostalgia of the First Degree.

Their thumbs weren't working the offshore breeze of the ocean-bound road where I first met them. So technically speaking, they weren't hitchhikers. They were simply travelers, out exploring the world. As for me - all I did was pull over and ask if they needed a ride.

I stopped in the middle of traffic, hollered my offer through the open window, and The Travelers were in my car within seconds. They smelled like sweat and they looked tired, but their faces glowed with happiness through their sunburns. I fell in love with The Travelers immediately.

The Travelers were looking for Hollywood Beach, which is less than a mile from where I picked them up. I asked where they were headed on Hollywood Beach, which stretches for about one mile along the coast, and they simply shrugged, at a loss. Remembering the days when I had destinations absent of specifics, I suddenly felt embarrassed for forgetting that traveling the way The Travelers are - the way I once did - is about arriving at a dot on the map; a general destination. Everything else is like an afterthought, because the most important part of the trip is getting to that dot...and the next dot...and the one after that.

In the few minutes that we shared together in the car, The Travelers told me an abbreviated version of their story. They're a young couple from Baltimore, who simply couldn't answer the question of what to do with the rest of their lives when it was posed to them after finishing school. So instead of answering the Unanswerable Question, they decided to travel together, with no expectations, no obligations, and no safety nets.

I've been there before, with Jax. The Unanswerable Question between me and Jax wasn't the same as what The Travelers are currently faced with, but the principle is the same. You're standing at a crossroads in life and you're not sure of which path to take, so you pull in a deep breath, hold tightly to the hand of the person standing next to you, and put one foot in front of the other. Eventually, regardless of the circumstances, the answers will be clear.

I don't know what The Travelers are in for or out for. All I know for sure is that I dropped them off at Hollywood Beach and told them how to get to the sand dunes where they should be able to sleep for the night without attracting attention...and now I'm having a REAL tough time focusing at The Office Job, thanks to my Nostalgia of the First Degree!