Leaving work last Friday at 11pm, I couldn’t help but notice the urgent orange flashes from my dashboard as my gas gauge did it’s best to remind me that it was on empty. Five minutes later I was pulling into the local neighborhood gas station. Swiping my credit card into the pump, I engaged the nozzle and soon had a full tank of 87. Turning around I placed the nozzle back into it’s cradle, grabbed my receipt and spun around again to enter my car, but was stopped by what looked like a fast approaching hard-core gang member. “Oh sh**…now what?” I thought as the ground between us closed. As he neared I made a mental note of what he was wearing: a wife-beater shirt, black shorts that stopped just above his calves, white tube socks, and black shoes. His arms were covered in tattoos, and he had two dots tattooed under the corner of his left eye. I can also tell you that he was no stranger to the gym. My mind was caught between wanting to get into a defensive stance or try to dive into my car and gun the engine, but before I could decide it was too late. He was right in front of me, not looking happy at all…

The words that came out of his mouth did not match the words you would think would be coming from a gang-banger at 11pm on a Friday night. “Excuse me, sir,” he meekly said, spreading his arms out with palms toward me to show that he was unarmed (at least that’s what I interpreted the gesture to mean), “but do you have jumper cables?”

“Uh, sure” I hesitantly stammered. “You need a jump?”

“Yeah, car died” he said, pointing to the lowered silver car two rows over. His three passengers were sitting low in their seats, one of the eyeing me from underneath a folded bandana.

“Let me pull up to you,” I said as I arced my arm in the path my car would be taking towards his.

“Hey, thanks man!” he said smiling, his look changing from angry to hopeful.

I coasted up too his car and parked. One of his passengers slowly got out and accepted the jumper cables I handed him. Together we jumped his car to the shouts of “hell yeah!”

Tattoo-man got out of his now idling car, came up to me, shook my hand and said “Thank you, sir!” Twisting the jumper cables around my arms and bundling them up I said “No problem. You’re welcome.”

He pulled away as I was throwing the jumper cables back into my trunk, his passengers smiling at me, happily throwing out gang symbols. I waved back with a smile, thankful that I was part of the solution and not part of some sort of gang initiation.