Would You?
I walked out of my front door after stopping off there for lunch and a guy who was lost asked me for directions back to Sunset Blvd. He was obviously European and didn't really seem to understand where I was telling him to go. He said okay and then went towards the direction I pointed. I got in my car and thought, should I just give him a ride? The usual paranoid thoughts started ambling through my head, and when I got to the end of the block and saw him looking up the street looking in the wrong direction. I honked and offered him a ride. Less than 1 block later I was telling him the ocean is west and downtown is east, which is kind of laughable in Los Angeles, considering how large it is, and not at all like most European cities. Hearing his accent made me want to visit my relatives, about 25 of which live in Germany and I had a strong craving to hear from real people who lead very different lives than the kind of supa-international flavors of Los Angeles, which mostly means you can eat different kinds of foods here every day of the week and feel like you've traveled all over the world, but have gone nowhere at all.
It got me thinking about a story I saw in Good on "couchsurfing." You can post an online profile so that folks from over the world can crash at your house. Am I crazy, I think that would be cool. But I can't even give a German a ride down the block without that nagging unconscious sense of dread that our culture has brainwashed into my very being. Would you let some traveler you met online sleep on your couch?
