To the guy I kind of kidnapped, thank you for changing my life. I hope you read the note.
I promise the title isn’t clickbait, it comes into the story in the middle but this was a while ago but I thought of it recently and my perspective of the situation has changed since so here goes:
This was back in March of this year, I freshly graduated high school and had started university. This was a brand new class for me and it started at 12pm that day and due to a bad hair day and bad outfit day, I was late and arrived at the campus at 11:45am (rookie mistake). By the time I had arrived, the entire parking lot was full and I, not being used to the area was beginning to panic that I’d be late for my very first class, all this while I had my windows down and rap music blaring. While I’m doing my third round of the parking lot, desperately hoping someone would leave, I see a young man walk onto the sidewalk and stare, we make eye contact and I made a face, signalling my pain. I drive past him only to hear him say something and run-walk to my car so I stop and he asks if I need parking and I nod frantically. He starts giving me a list of directions on where to go and one thing you should know about me is that I am TERRIBLE with directions, I can’t find my way for the life of me so being desperate and having less than 10 minutes till class starts, I ask him if he could get in and show me the way. He looks at me, a complete stranger and then at my car and then back at me and says “sure let’s do this” but not before saying “are you sure you’re not going to kidnap me?” I laugh in response and start driving with him directing me. I find out that he had the same car model as me until he got a new one and how I might meet to get my car engine checked because of a noise he heard but I didn’t. He guides me to a parking spot not too far and we get out, while walking back to the campus, we walk past his car and I say it’s cute, he looks offended and says that you should never say a guy’s car is cute. We talk a bit more until he says his class in the opposite direction of mine so I thank him profoundly and we part ways. I didn’t realise until after we parted ways that I never got his name, I got everything but that so I put it to use when I get to my class.
My class went for a few hours and was separated with a 20 minute break so during said break, I snuck into a bathroom stall and ripped a piece of paper from my notebook and wrote a letter profusely thanking him, feeling bad for never getting his name and how much it meant to me, but especially because I wouldn’t have found a way without his help and lastly my name. I remembered where he showed me his car so the second class finished, I sprinted down to the parking lot, hoping he hadn’t left yet and thankfully he didn’t but he also wasn’t there yet for me to give it to him so instead, I triple checked to make sure it was his car and slipped the note into his windshield wiper on the side he would sit so he could see it and I walked back to my car and exited the driveway and started to make my way home.
By this time it was 3pm and peak traffic so I tried going a completely different way to get out quicker but to no avail. I was moving through traffic bit by bit and then see at a side road, his exact car trying to enter my lane. He recognises me and lowers his window with an ear to ear smile and I smile back, I stand up in my car seat a-bit to see that the note I left in his windshield is still there and this is the conversation that follows:
Me: “Your windshield wiper!”
Him: “What about it?”
Me: “I left a little note in your windshield wiper for what I couldn’t say”
Him: Stands up sightly to look at his windshield and says: “Motherf***er
Traffic starts clearly up and we say our goodbyes and he enters behind and we drive for a bit until we part ways.
While he was driving behind me, I can’t stop giggling over the note and how impressed I was that it didn’t blow away.
I’ve never seen him since but I hope he read my note and felt how impactful his actions meant to me. I felt so ugly that day, I hadn’t washed my hair in two days and I couldn’t style it properly and the blouses I wore, I felt hideous in. Not that I don’t feel confident or love myself but that day was a bad day for me. I’ve always heard and unfortunately have been conditioned to believe that men only help women that they find attractive or can give them something as well as the nice guys that help but expect something in return. We didn’t even know each other and he still agreed, even though when his class was further away when he came with me. I found him cute and if there’s anything I could’ve done differently, I would’ve gotten his name and left my number on the note. I thought he was adorable, especially when he was driving behind me and I saw him through my central car mirror.
I don’t know why I’m writing this months later, maybe because I changed my degree and moved to a completely different campus or that I think of him from time to time when I see his car model when I’m driving or my 2am thoughts on whether he was able to read the note or not. I just wanted to write this because this happened during a time where I was struggling mentally and physically, I was struggling to leave the house that day, actually. He wouldn’t have known that but his actions unintentionally changed my outlook on things so to whoever reading this, please be kind, always help people because what you say or do for them might just change their life.