My Ride With John

This Is What I Am Supposed To Do

Last week, I needed to drive to a pool repair business about a half hour northeast of me to sign a contract/write a check for some work we’re looking to have done. It is 21 miles away on country roads, and this time of year the farmers are pretty busy so you sometimes have to patiently wait to pass. It was a beautiful day and a very pleasant drive. As I approached an intersection about three miles from my destination, I saw a man on the side of the road with a gas can in his hand. He looked to be in his early sixties, but slim and almost youthful in a way. He didn’t look dangerous or threatening, and so thinking he needed a ride to a nearby gas station or to his car, I rolled down the window and asked if I could help. He accepted happily and hopped in the passenger side.

I immediate asked “where to?” and he pointed me back in the direction from which I had come. There was a little traffic in our area, so it was a quick communication that got us headed in the right direction. We exchanged names, and his was John, and he told me that he needed a ride to meet his wife who had run out of gas. I asked where she was, and he answered that she had called him from somewhere near Cambridge—that she had run out of gas and had called him at home from a business close-by to where she was stranded. It occurred to me at that point that neither he nor she owned a mobile phone, and that his was indeed a predicament for this fellow and his bride. It also occurred to me that Cambridge was over 30 miles away back to the Southwest…so my little act of civic virtue in picking John up to ferry him to a gas station was now—-doing the quick math—going to add at least an hour and sixty miles to my afternoon errand.

My ride with John….

I really did do this math. I wasn’t bothered or angry, but I was inconvenienced by this act of kindness in a way that I hadn’t considered when first he got in the car. But then I got my head out of my butt and realized that this guy’s problems right now were a hell of a lot more substantial than mine. He really needed help, and I had time on my hands. The only right thing to do was to be in the moment, enjoy the fine day and the good conversation, and try to help John as best I could. This is what I am supposed to do.

We covered a lot of ground. He’d never been in a Jaguar before, so we talked a lot about that, and he seemed to have no doubt that the 280,000 miles I had on mine was brand standard (hint: it isn’t). He wanted to know about me, my family, my job. I asked similar questions. He had two boys, one living in Connecticut and one in Philly. He said they were good boys, raising good families. He wanted to know about Russia, and Ukraine, and China, and so I did my best to talk him through some stuff and add to his mastery of those subjects. He was deeply religious, and we talked about God. He seemed to indicate a belief that everything that happens was predicted in the Bible. I offered that I couldn’t verify that, not being a Biblical expert, but that my faith led me to believe that God knows all, including all that will be, and he seemed very satisfied with that.

He offered that there was a genocide happening in Baltimore, that black people were shooting black people every night, and it seemed to weigh on him. John was black, and later told me that he had nearly drowned three times in his life, and each time a white woman saved him.

We craned our necks to look at the other side of the highway as we drove to Cambridge, but there was no sign of his wife or the car. Had someone come along and helped her with some gas, and was she now pleasantly on her way home (but with not means to call her husband to warn him)? Had we missed her as we engaged in what was turning out to be a damn fine chat on a beautiful spring day? The quest seemed in jeopardy. John then told me he had a sister in Cambridge, and that maybe his wife was there, or that she would call there. If not, the sister had a car and they could then carry on with the search. So we drove to his sister’s house.

As John got out of the car, he asked me if I had a couple of dollars for gas. I’d never thought to ask if there was any gas in the can, nor did the lack of gas fumes cause me to realize it was empty. I gave him some money, more than he needed, and suggested he buy his wife some dinner once he found her. He was grateful, and we said goodbye.

My life is richer for having rolled my window down Friday, and for having the honor of knowing John for that short time. He was confident things would work out, and more than a little embarrassed that we hadn’t found his wife. None of that mattered, or matters. What matters is that on the Friday of the holiest weekend of the year, I—perhaps a wee bit uncharacteristically—was able to put aside my busy-ness and my convenience and my oh-so-valuable-time—and help a guy out who really needed a solid. John gave me so much more than I gave him.

The GOP and Abortion

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe with the Dobbs decision, I was pleased. Roe was a monument to lawmaking from the bench, and bad lawmaking at that. I’d always believed that when Roe was overturned (which I figured it eventually would), the country would retreat into a patchwork of state law where a woman’s ability to end the human life growing inside of her would vary based on the affinity for such things in that state. Not great, if what you’re concerned with is the snuffing out of human life, but reasonable and workable if your greater concern is protecting the Constitution and the rule of law.

Much of the country has passed updated abortion legislation since the decision. Some state pretty much didn’t change anything, some states pretty much banned the procedure altogether, and some dramatically restricted the time available to a woman to have an abortion from what it was under Roe and Casey (right up until birth), to in some cases as little as six weeks.

My gut was (and is) that the sweet spot (politically) is somewhere around 12 weeks. Most reasonable people should agree that this is PLENTY of time for a woman to determine that she is pregnant and that she wants to end the pregnancy. Don’t come at me with your stories of your cousin Mathilde who didn’t know she was pregnant until 20 weeks, because I don’t want to hear it. When I say “sweet spot”, what I’m trying to say is that if a state set its abortion law at 12 weeks, I do not think the Republican politicians in that state would pay much of an electoral price. Below that—and I have a feeling they will. Abortion is a very potent political issue, and the degree to which GOP politicians (not abortion activists) understand that the country generally wants abortion available and limited will determine winning and losing elections, as independents just aren’t going to throw their lot with the wing-nut right on this issue.

Into this ongoing political discussion comes a federal judge’s decision in Texas recently that one of the drugs used to block pregnancy was improperly approved for use by the FDA 23 years ago, and that it must be taken off the market. In Washington State, a different Federal judge ruled almost at the same time that the status quo be maintained with the drug, that the FDA followed all of its protocols in approving it.

My Spidey-senses tell me the judge in Texas has made a mistake in his ruling, that his well-understood hostility to abortion in any form is playing itself out in his decision. I suppose that as a fan of limited executive power, I ought to applaud a judge taking an executive agency to task for its procedures, and in general, I do. But there’s more here than that, and I feel pretty confident this fellow gets overturned right quick on the next level.

As a practical matter, drugs such as the one under consideration are something I am greatly in favor of, and again, I think the GOP will go WAY too far if it is seen to be blocking women (Can I say that, or is it transphobic?) from purchasing a means to ensure that they have not gotten pregnant from an exchange where other precautions may not have been present.