No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Have you ever stopped to help someone change a tire on the side of the road?

I did it the other morning.

In my small town and almost to the highway, I saw 2 black women with a flat and it was pretty obvious that they didn't know what they where doing. So I stopped. "Do ya'll need any help?" They said "Oh yes, please, please!"

As I am working on installing the spare I hear a guy scream "Get your hands up!" I turn to look and it's a cop with his gun pointed at me. There is another one doing the same thing with the women there. I do what he tells me and  move to my truck and put my hands on it so he can cuff me. It turns out that these lovely ladies had just carjacked somebody for this car. As I am sitting on the guardrail cuffed with my fuckin' neighbors driving by I confess my innocence to him.  He seemed to believe me but we had to wait for a detective to show up so I could be 'cleared'. I finally was cleared and got the hell out of there.

I realized later some of the things I did wrong, some of them really wrong. It's not that I stopped to help them, sometimes people need help. The problem was that I was in condition white, I was too trusting (Wirecutter had a post about it).

I noticed that the tire was shredded, not just flat. They must have driven on it for a while, that should have been a clue. I still went to work on it without keeping an eye on them. They may have wanted to jack me. My truck was there, running. If that's the case, the police saved me.

I also didn't notice when 2 guys came up on us and had me in their sights. They yelled at me before I saw them. I felt like a sheep.

I still feel like an idiot and lucky to not have a knot in the back of my head and a stolen truck or worse.

Go ahead and leave comments about how else I screwed up. If it helps me or anyone else it'll be worth it.