Let's Not Meet Again

"Don't Be Sorry,"

Every Wednesday I have a voice lesson at my voice teacher's house. Since my voice teacher lives downtown, there are quite a few homeless people down there, but I've never felt that any of them have posed a threat to me. I live in a beach town in California, and the people here are more eccentric than dangerous.

I usually get to my voice teacher's house a few minutes too early and I don't like to interrupt any student she might be working with before me, so I usually spend a few minutes just sitting in my car looking at my phone.

This day was no different. I parked directly in front of her house and was going through my phone when I saw a man walking down the sidewalk towards my car. I'm surprised I even noticed him really, considering I was very engrossed in my phone but something instantly felt off so I locked my doors and pretended I didn't notice him. He obviously still noticed me, and crossed in front of my car and knocked on my window. I was a little shocked as I didn't think he would actually approach me, but I reluctantly rolled down my window anyway. Looking back, I probably shouldn't have even done that because that defeated the purpose of me locking my doors, but I am still a girl who has been conditioned to fear being rude more than fearing anything else really.

Once I was able to see him up close, I could tell this man was definitely homeless. He was very dirty and had on very worn clothes. I tried not to make snap judgements off of this fact, but like I said before, I am a young girl and this was a much older man and I think that was the thing that unsettled me the most. I am over 18, but I look very young and people easily mistake me for much younger than I am, and on top of that I watched dateline a lot as a kid (you know, like kids do) so I was always weary of older men for various reasons.

He immediately started acting very strange, and wouldn't look me in the eye when I asked what he wanted. He started talking by saying "Excuse me young man, I mean young boy. Young... person." This was odd because while I do look young, I certainly do not look masculine by any means as it's just not my style. I'd be willing to bet now that he wasn't sober, but this didn't cross my mind at the time.

He then proceeded to ask me if I could drop him off at some crossroad about three blocks over. He kept referring to himself as a "poor old man", which I guess was him trying to get me to feel bad for him. My alarms immediately went off and I gave him some bullshit excuse I barely remember about how I was late for something and wasn't able to, and told him I was sorry. It was at this point he actually looked me in the eyes and the last thing he said to me before he walked away was "Don't be sorry." After that I felt sort of bad for brushing him off like that because he might not have had malicious intent and actually needed help, but I definitely wasn't going to take that chance.

I immediately went into my voice teacher's house after that and told her what had happened. She offered to call the police, but I told her not to because the man really hadn't done anything wrong or threatened me in any way. We went on with the voice lesson and an hour later I got back in my car and headed home.

As I was driving down the street, not even a block over from where I just was, I see two police cars parked to the side of the road arresting the same man that had approached me an hour earlier. I was shocked enough to see this, and even more so when the headlights of my car caught the glint of a knife on the ground next to the man as they were handcuffing him. I practically speed home after this completely freaked out, wanting to get as far away from the scene as possible. I'm not sure what the man did, possibly tried the knife on somebody who actually had let him into their car, but I definitely didn't stick around to find out.

I've played the situation over in my head countless times since this happened, and I can't quite figure out why he decided to walk away from me without trying anything. As far as vulnerable looking people go, I'm about as vulnerable as you can get. Or maybe he could tell while he was talking to me what a piece of shit my car was and decided I didn't really have anything of value on me. (Which would be true, unless he was interested in a $20 Target giftcard and empty gum wrappers).

So, homeless man who approached my car who apparently had a knife on him and decided I wasn't worth it, let's not meet again.