I ran out of gas while driving home to Michigan after visiting a friend who was serving in the Air Force. Unknown to me, gas stations were closed early Sunday mornings in Alabama. Even those alongside a major Interstate highway. I'd left Biloxi Mississippi while it was still dark, thinking my almost half full gas tank was more than enough to get me to the next open gas station. Boy was I wrong.
That trip was when I discovered that draining the leftover dregs from gas pump hoses could score enough gas to make it to the next station. Unfortunately, the next one was closed, too. And the one after that. Finally, I ran out of gas in a long stretch of lonesome and pulled to the side of the highway near an exit. The sign at the top of the exit had an arrow pointing right and said Food -- Gas -- 15 Miles. Yikes!
Traffic was sparse and the few vehicles that sped by did not look my way, even after I hung a white flag from the antenna. Until finally, a car pulled up behind me and the nice man offered a gratefully accepted ride to the nearest gas station.
We hadn't gone far, though, when he said "I'll bet you have a nice cock." I couldn't believe I'd heard that right, so I asked him to repeat and he did. Then he put his hand on my leg.
It was about 7 in the morning, a nice sunny Sunday, and we were driving past empty cotton and soybean fields, beautifully plowed in ruler straight rows in preparation for winter. Nary a tractor or farmer to be seen, no buildings, no other traffic. Just me and my Good Samaritan.
I was 22 years old at the time, an Army veteran standing 6' 5" tall and weighing a fairly muscular 220 pounds. The last fight I'd been in, just a few weeks before by chance, had seen me disarm and wrestle to the ground a guy who'd attacked me with a police-style billy club. But what if this guy has a gun? a little voice inside me wondered. This'll teach you not to run out of gas in Alabama, the voice added helpfully. I might be imagining this last part, but I could swear the theme from Deliverance was running through my head. In stereo.
"No thanks," I said. "Would you take me back to my car now?"
Which is what a woman unshaped by fear would be able to do. Say no, fully expecting that it would be enough. If it wasn't enough, the woman unshaped by fear would know beyond a doubt that she could beat the guy to a pulp. And if the woman unshaped by fear were like me, a man unshaped by fear, she would believe, as I fully did, that if he started reaching for a gun she would grab his arm and she would break his fingers. No means No, dammit!
Fortunately, none of that was needed. He just nodded and turned the car around and dropped me off. A short while later another car pulled up behind me, this one filled with four young ladies on their way to Radford University in Virginia. They took me to a gas station (Finally open. Yay!) and I was soon back on the road to Michigan.
And that is what it would be like for a woman living in a world unshaped by fear.