If not for my book bag....

This morning I was two long strides away from my bus stop (a glass shelter with a bench) when I heard a honk and saw a car had stopped in the road, even with the shelter. The driver--a man--pointed and sort of gestured at me. I thought maybe he needed directions or wanted to ask which buses came by the stop. (People always seem to pick me to ask for directions. I almost always know where I am and how to get to wherever, but I fear my typical style of giving directions is an incomprehensible mixture of "turn somewhere near the big chicken" and "travel exactly 2.43579 miles west.")

I took one more big step in the direction of the bus shelter and the car and leaned down a bit so I could see the driver's face and maybe hear him. He said, as he started moving things off his passenger seat, "Do you need a ride? Where are you going?" Ummm, what?!! I responded, "No. I'm fine, thanks," and waved him away with my hand. He drove on.

So, while I waited for the bus, I started thinking, "What thirtysomething woman (in her right mind) gets in some strange man's car?" When I got to work, I told a co-worker what had happened. I said to her, "Who would get in a strange man's car? Do you think he thought I was a prostitute?" She said, "Did you have your book bag with you?" "Yes, my book bag and my lunch bag." "Well, then, he wouldn't have thought you were a prostitute."

Now, logic was a bit of a struggle for me in college* and I often leave the logic puzzles in those big books of games--the ones that come from the grocery store--blank, but I think from the exchange with my coworker we can make two conclusions:

1. I usually look like a prostitute--however it is that a prostitute looks.
2. My book bag is the only thing that makes me not look like a prostitute.

Great. Just. Perfect.


*This is what I remember most from my semester of logic: The philosophy professor who taught the class had a completely bald--maybe shaved--head and wore a black leather cap. Oh, and arguing against an idea by exclaiming, "That's a logical fallacy!" is really satisfying. Unfortunately, the only logical fallacy I can reliably recognize is ad hominem, so I don't get to say it very often.