It's was my birthday last Sunday, the fourth of June. I like to say that birthdays aren't that terribly important to me, at least not my own birthday, but some of my friends were coming over to my apartment at 6:30 to hang out and eat cake and talk, and I couldn't think of any better way to celebrate. I thought about renting a movie, but a movie is quite a commitment and the mix of people was quite diverse. So instead I decided to rent the first season on the British version of the TV show The Office, that way the commitment would be much shorter and I already knew it was a great show, one of the best in fact. As I pulled up to Premiere Video, an amazing video store in central Dallas, I saw an African American male being asked to leave the premises by a security officer. When I stepped out of my car the man ran up to me and began to speak very loud and quick, slurring and stumbling over his words. From what I could gather he was asking me to jump his car. He pointed across the street at a parking lot and told me that he had cables. I knew that he probably didn't have a car, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and I offered to meet him over there. He motioned to walk across the street and I unlocked my car. He jumped inside the passenger seat of my car.
I stood there looking at him, he was fidgeting and excited. I looked up at the security guard who with a morbid look on his face rolled his eyes and turned around. I thought for a second about what to do and I opened my door. Without getting in I looked inside at the man and asked him if he just needed a jump. "Yeah man, I just need a jump, my car is right across the street." I got in my car. "Say man," he said, "I've been motherf**king workin' at SMU for 24 years, can you take me over to work so I can tell them that I'm going to be late?" SMU was just on the other side of the highway and I figured that I could just drop the guy off at work and go back to rent the video. He started talking immediately, asking me about the Maverick's game the night before, about SMU football, about where I went to school and what I did for a living. There was a high-school cheerleading camp going on. We passed a group of workers from SMU who were walking on the sidewalk and he yelled out to them. I drove in and parked in front of one of the small buildings and he told me that he would just run in and tell his boss what was up. I was feeling giving so I backed in to another parking spot in the shade so that I wouldn't be staring at the cheerleaders. He ran into the building and was back to my car in no more than 30 seconds. It didn't even look like he actually went in the building. Something serious was up.
He jumped back in my car and told me I had a great personality and that he was going to give me forty dollars for helping him out. I told him that I wouldn't accept it. He started screaming that he made twenty four dollars an hour at SMU and that he could afford it. I told him that I didn't want his money and he screamed louder. He was missing his front teeth and I couldn't understand what he was saying. He was telling me to turn right and that he needed to go to the ATM around the corner. I told him that I thought he needed to get back to his car and he said that he needed money to pay for the tow truck. I had offered to call the tow truck for him before he had got in my car so I knew that there was no tow truck. I drove to the ATM, and parked in front of it. He began to stutter and speak loudly again. He said, "I'll give you fifty dollars, I'll give you forty dollars, you give me forty and I'll give you a hundred that's forty, you give me twenty, you give me three twenties!" He wasn't getting out of the car. He grabbed my arm and said, "you give me three twenties and I'll give you a hundred and you can keep the change you can keep fifty dollars." Even though the change left over would be forty dollars I took the keys out of the ignition and put them in my pocket. The windows were rolled down. My back seat was filled with stuff that I was bringing home from my parents house. My Ipod was sitting in the middle console. I saw a police officer in a Tahoe turn right two blocks in front of me. He was sitting in my car with all my stuff so i quickly pulled sixty dollars out of the ATM. He yelled to me from out of the window, "Hey man, is this yo' family?" "Yeah, that's my mom and dad," I said. There was a large picture from the early eighties of my mom and dad and sister and brother sitting in the back seat. I jumped back in my car and took off back towards Mockingbird station. He grabbed the sixty dollars out of my hand. I didn't care. I told him that my friends were waiting for me back at my apartment. I was supposed to meet them at 6:30 and it was now 6:45. I had taken two calls and missed two just in the amount of time that he was in my car. I just wanted him out. He told me that the tow truck was waiting at the gas station around the corner, but he told me to get on the highway. I wasn't happy about this and I told him. I also began to tell him about a book I was reading that says that in the Bible Jesus tells us to love everyone. I told him that was why I was helping him out, because Jesus said that was the right thing to do. He told me that he went to the Baptist church. He was clapping his hands together. I guess he was happy about having enough money to pay for the tow truck. We drove down four exits, first to the train station then to a gas station where he said the tow truck would be waiting. There was no tow truck in the parking lot. He told me to do a U-turn and park on the other side of the street because the driver was going to give him a discount on a new battery and that he didn't want his boss finding out. Earlier he told me that it wasn't the battery, but that it was his alternator that was bad.
I did a U-turn, and he told me to pull over. He would have to run across six lanes of traffic and I told him that I didn't want him to get hit by a car. He yelled for me to pull over. His eyes were yellow and blood shot and he didn't blink. The veins stuck out on his skinny arms and his hands were dry. He looked desperate. I didn't stop. I continued to roll slowly and he screamed for me to stop and clambered for the door. I sped up just a little bit. "There's one thing I need to tell you," I said. "What, what!?" he said. "Jesus loves you," I said "He is the only son of God, He was God in the flesh of a man. Do you know that?" "Yeah, Jesus man, just let me out, just trust me, let me out!" he said. "Not yet," I said. I was scared and he could hear it in my voice, he looked like he wanted to hit me. "There's a place called heaven and a place called hell. Do you believe that?" "Yeah, yeah," he said, "and I'm going to hell." "Jesus has offered you a free gift to be saved from having to go to hell." "Yeah, a free gift man," he said. "It's a free gift that he offered to you by dying for you." I said. "When He died He covered the price of your sins. Then He raised Himself from the dead, that's how you know that He is the God of love. Because He came back for you." "Man, let me out!" he screamed. "Just trust me, just go to the Chevron and wait for me. Just trust me." "Man, I know what you are doing," I said. "I don't care about the sixty dollars, you can have it. I just want you to know that Jesus loves you and that He died for you. When you believe that He is the only son of God, you'll start a relationship with Him and He'll begin to change your life. No matter what you do, no matter how good you are or how bad you are, you never have to worry about hell. He'll never abandon you." I stopped the car and he jumped out and ran across traffic and behind the gas station.
I sat in my car and put my hazards on. My air conditioning was out and I had the windows down. I felt exhausted. I put my head in my hands and rubbed my temples. I was so sad for that man. I knew that he was going to buy crack and that with that much money he might kill himself with the amount of drugs he was about to take. I didn't know if he knew Jesus and even after all the lies he had just told me, I couldn't bear the thought of him going to hell and being separated from Christ's love forever. I couldn't even imagine forever. I looked left at the gas station. I saw the man's head peek around the corner and look at me. He came out from behind the gas station and ran back across the street through traffic and up to my car. He grabbed my arm and said, "please man, just go to the Chevron and wait for me. I'll be there in two minutes, why can't you just trust me. You're making me look bad." I said, "I know what you're doing John. I just don't understand why you have to lie to me. Why can't you just tell me that you need the sixty dollars? What you are doing is wrong." " No man, I'm a man of my word. Just trust me!" he said. "You're lying John and you are the one that has to live with that. Remember what I told you. Jesus loves you, it's a free gift, all you have to do is accept it." His eyes filled up with tears and he said, "just wait for me man, just go to the Chevron, just trust me." "Jesus loves you John," I said. He ran limping back across traffic and behind the gas station. I went to the Chevron and backed my car into a spot facing the highway. My AC was broken and I was pouring sweat. I began to pray that John would accept God's love, and that he wouldn't hurt any more people. When I went home everyone was waiting for me. And it was one of the best birthdays I've ever had.
Even with my AC finally fixed in my car so that I barely notice the temperature from my climate controled apartment, to my climate controlled car, to my climate controlled office and back again; I started to wonder why it would say that. Every time I looked at it I would think perhaps that I had been time-warped to four months ago, or better yet that I had been daydreaming and the last four months hadn't yet happened. It turns out, I've been awake, and no time-warp either. It turns out that there is a Dallas in Pennsylvania, and for some reason it's a higher priority in the lists of Dallas than Dallas, Texas. Here is what it should look like:
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