A Strange Man's Van

One time, I got in a van with a strange man.

 It looked a lot like this!

Don’t worry, I had a good reason. Here’s the story.

I went camping every summer as a kid with my cousins. And I mean all of my cousins. Like my dad’s brothers’ kids, and then my dad’s cousins kids. Total, there was about 20 of us at the height of summer camping.

It was a lot like this.  Except less diversity.

It was way cool. We did crafts and stuff.

Lots of these bad boys.

Well, one year when I was about 4, I wasn’t allowed to do the same craft as the older kids, and naturally that made me angry. How dare they think I was incapable of stringing beads in a specific, predetermined pattern!

In retrospect, I probably was incapable, but I digress.

Anyway, I went off to the bathroom house thingy and got lost. Which should be an indicator, if anything, of how adept I would have been at semi-advanced crafting. On my way back to the campsite, which was not nearly as far as I thought it was, a nice guy in a big van thingy with his teenage son asked if I needed a ride somewhere.

This would be a good moment to interject that, as a 4 year old, I was probably like 2 feet tall and was probably very conspicuous walking by myself.

So, since the campsite was still decently far away (like 800 feet!) and it was hot, I jumped in the van. I directed the van driving guy to “the camper with the green boat cover…see the bead thingies? Yeah! With all the kids!” He kindly let me out of his vehicle.

My Aunt Sandy, who saw all of this, was not pleased, and gave the guy a pretty good verbal lashing. At the time, I thought this was completely rude. He was being so nice!

I mean, he offered me so much candy!

Alright, let’s bring this story back around. I vaguely remember this story. I said I was 4, but I very well could have been 2. It’s one of those stories from your childhood that you think back on and go “did that really happen?”, and for the purpose of this blog post, it did happen.

So, what does this mean to me now?

I choose to look at this as a lesson in “don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” Because of my limited memory of the situation and my naivety at the time, the van driving guy could have had ill intentions that I didn’t realize that prompted my aunt’s verbal lashings. However, if the story was truly as I remembered, I got out of the van and was well on my way before any adult said anything. Because of bad outcomes in other situations, my aunt chose to stereotype this guy, who very well could have been doing a super nice thing.

 This goes along with my “philosophy” that everyone deserves a chance to explain their story before someone makes judgments.

Cause it’d be really nice to not have to consider the whole stranger danger thing every time a guy in a van offers me a ride, cause I really hate walking.