So my entire life I've had this problem where sometimes I'm far too trusting with strangers. My parents always like to bring up this one story as a prime example: I was 5 years old, with my family at some sort of fair in Northern California. I don't really remember what happened, but I remember one of my brothers had won me a penguin stuffed animal and I just thought it was the greatest thing ever. Next thing I know, my mom gets distracted for a second and temporarily loses sight of me, and we're separated. Then this man came up to me, asked me some questions about the stuffy I was holding, took it from me for a second, and then handed it back. He said something about how the stuffed animals was partially ripped or something (which it wasn't) then instructed me to take his hand, so I did....and apparently he started leading me out to the parking lot. We're almost completely out of sight of the fair, when suddenly out of nowhere my mom comes running up to us and in one single motion ripped my hand from this guy's hand and picked me up. It was actually pretty incredible because my mom has a terrible back and even had trouble picking me up when I was a little baby, let alone 5. Then all of the sudden my dad, my brothers, and a whole squad of security guards caught up, and I don't know what happened after that.
The problem is, this isn't an isolated incident, and the other problem is that I haven't grown out of this. Pretty much my whole life, even now that I'm 20, my parents have worried about this. They're worried that I'll walk off with some random, dangerous stranger, or that I'll accidentally give away my credit card information, or that I'll do any number of stupid things because I am extremely gullible and trusting. I think the problem is that I don't lie and to a certain extent I'm pretty much incapable of being manipulative, so I have a hard time understanding when other people are lying, or are being manipulative, or have ulterior motives.
So anyway, this morning I went to the wall to put in a note before leaving. (If you tell people what you prayed for, does it not come true? Or is that just for birthday cake wishes? Someone let me know please...). And I decided to come back up through the Arab Quarter since I had come through the Armenian Quarter on the way in. And this Arab guy who looks about 40 or 50 calls out to me. I ignore him. But he keeps calling out, asking questions and such. All in English. He then keeps repeating, "excuse me? Excuse me?" and he sounded like he was pleading, and then I felt like a bitch for ignoring him. So I turned around, and we started chatting. He started asking questions about what I had seen in Jerusalem, and he explained that he was born in the Old City and lived there his whole life. He was actually very interesting, and I'm really interested in the history of that area, so I started to loosen up. He offered to show me a great view of Christian, Jewish and Muslim holy sites. And I thought that sounded cool, so I said yes.
I don't want to tell the full story until later, but it was a totally shit farewell to Jerusalem, I can tell you that much.
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1 comment:
oh wow. this is going to probably wait til we're back?
<3
irwlk
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