JILL FARRIS writes:

When Tocqueville exclaimed over the safety of American women, those women were not doing blatantly stupid things such as riding their bicycles alone across America. Women in past history hadn’t yet been schooled to ignore their instinctive modesty and God-given fear to go alone into questionable situations. An excellent book to read on this subject is What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us by Danielle Crittenden.

I, too, remember the 70s and the hitchhikers lining the highways of America. My brother was one of them and he was held at knife point and robbed several times in his travels. I also remember women friends who hitchhiked and believed that giving sex for a ride was a fair exchange. Perhaps the young woman on the bicycle would not have been surprised to have been asked for an “exchange.”

One thing I do to fight the battle for the return of the distinct sexes in our world is to caution young women who put themselves in compromising situations. It is good for a woman to hear someone say, “Can I help you? Do you need a ride to a safe place?” … especially if they have never heard those words before.

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Karen I. writes:

I took a ride from a strange man once twenty years ago. I was young, alone, lost in a large city out west on a hot day over a thousand miles from my childhood town, broke, exhausted and thirsty. An older man drove up and asked if I needed a ride. I hesitated, then politely refused. He drove away, but circled back and asked me again 10 minutes later. This time, I accepted. The car was nice, the man seemed nice and I was desperate. The minute I got in that car, I realized what a mistake I might have made. It all ended well, but when I think of what might have been, it still makes me feel a little sick. 

It is easy to judge young women who make foolish mistakes like that, but what about the mistakes their parents might have made that would have their daughter in such a situation in the first place? In my case, my parents allowed me to travel across the country all alone several times with very little money, starting in my mid-teens. They did not just approve of it, they waved goodbye to me with a smile. Looking back, I think they were lucky they did not get a call telling them my body was found in a ditch somewhere. 

The incident I wrote about here was one of the biggest mistakes I made traveling alone, but it was not the only one. I have long since settled down and I would never allow my own children to travel that way. Perhaps parents do not realize just how many dangers young people face far from home alone. It is nice to see the world and there is a lot of fun to be had traveling, but one misstep is all it takes to wind up in a horrible situation. I met a lot of other young travelers from all walks of life in my time away from home and most of us wound up tired, lonely, drunk or broke more than once. All it takes is one of those things for a young person to let their guard down and compromise their safety with disastrous consequences.

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