I tried, and failed, to hitch my first ride today. I'm in Jerusalem and had left my car, and after fifteen minutes at the bus stop I decided I should have enough positive hitchhiking karma stored up to get a ride pretty easily. Not so. I stood there for fifteen minutes with my hand out. I tried it with the cap on, the cap off, casual stance, formal stance, smiling, not smiling. Nothing.
After a while this woman came to wait at the bus stop and so I shmoozed with her. She mentioned how she's always being stopped and searched at the bus station because she looks Arabic (she's a Yemeni Jew). She said it didn't bother her. She understands the situation, she said.
So then I mentioned that I thought I was having a hard time catching a ride because of how I looked.
"This is not the reason," she said, in her thick Israeli accent.
"You don't think so?"
"In Israel," she said, "we know to tell between someone who is scary and someone who is not so scary."
"Yeah, but I'm a guy, I'm six feet tall, I haven't shaved in a while. Bushy beard, you know, people might think, who knows, this guy..."
"No," she said, looking away.
"No?" I said, hopefully.
She gave me another quick glance. "Not even little bit."
1 comment:
So if you aren't dangerous looking, why do you fail at hitchhiking?
Maybe you look like someone who own's a car?
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