Stranded in Wabash and the Miracle of Selflessness

When you live in Donald Trump’s America and work in pop culture media, as I do, it’s hard to have an overly rosy view of the world. You could say that I have a dim view of humanity but I really just see people as being ruthlessly and overwhelmingly motivated by self-interest. 

That’s just human nature. Selfishness and self-interest come to us more naturally than selflessness. I try not to judge that instinct too harshly because I know that I’m as motivated by self-interest as everyone else. I wish I wasn’t. I wish I was more gracious. I wish I had a bigger, nobler spirit but I know myself and I know that one of my faults is that I can be so intensely focused on pursuing my own needs, and the needs of my family, that it can be blind me to the needs of others. 

So I try to cut other people slack and because I always expect people to act largely, if not exclusively, on self-interest, I am blown away when people are selfless. Recently, for example, I found myself in a dilly of a pickle. I was following “Weird Al” Yankovic’s tour and that night he was playing in Wabash, Indiana. 

Yes, THAT Wabash. The famous one. 

Since I do not have a car, nor any manner of flying machine I am traveling via Greyhound Bus and I noticed that the Greyhound stop nearest to Wabash was in Marion, Indiana. Sure enough, I got off in Marion and discovered, to my horror, mortification and surprise, that Marion has NO cabs. Nor does it have Lyft. Or Uber.

The same is true, astonishingly, of Wabash, Indiana. Wabash, Indiana has a tourism bureau. It has a historical museum. It has a goddamned newspaper. It has a huge venue where “Weird Al” Yankovic played that sat thousands. 

And yet, for some unknown, inexplicable reason, it never quite got around to providing a way for carless people to get around. 

I learned this the hard way when I ducked into a huge, completely empty hotel in Marion and asked if they could call me a cab. They called the dude who apparently served as the city’s entire cab fleet and he gruffly told me he was unavailable that afternoon but his brother might be free for the right price. 

“Please, please! I’m desperate! I will pay a very large sum of money for a ride to Wabash! I need to be there tonight for the “Weird Al” Yankovic show.” I pleaded. There as a silence and then responded with a brusque, “What’s a very large sum of money to you?” 

“Uh, I dunno know. Eighty dollars. A hundred dollars?” I pleaded. There was a brief pause and then he answered, “Okay.” 

I was worried that instead of driving me to Wabash, he’d murder me for my laptop, and then dump my dead body by the side of the road but he drove me to Wabash and delivered the somewhat alarming news that Wabash did not have any cabs, Lyfts or Ubers either. 

I found myself in the position of being stranded in a tiny small town in Indiana indefinitely, with no way to leave. Who knows, maybe I could get a job at the tourism board or newspaper and then quietly but persistently crusade for my new hometown to get a bus or at least a single Lyft driver. It might take a number of weeks, or months, or years, but it’d be worth it to someday be able to leave my quaint, spacious Midwestern prison.  

I was in a dilly of a pickle so I did what I usually do in cases like this: I put my fate in the universe’s hands. And by “the universe” I of course mean “the internet.” I wrote of my predicament on my Facebook group Society for the Toleration of Nathan Rabin and one of its kindly members said that her in-law would be able to drive me from Wabash to a place with things like buses and trains and Lyfts and ways for people to travel long distances without knowing how to drive. 

I was saved! I could not be more grateful. The next morning the Society member’s father-in-law arrived at the King’s Inn, the motel where I was staying, and drove me something like fifty miles to the Fort Wayne Greyhound bus station even though he had absolutely nothing to gain from it. He did not know me. At all. Yet because I knew his daughter in law he was willing to sacrifice an enormous amount of his time and energy driving me an enormous distance. 

I was incredibly grateful to have a way out of Wabash, Indiana, which is a lovely place to visit but not somewhere I wanted to live permanently. But it went beyond that. I felt better about humanity as a whole. I was reminded that there are good people out there who will go out of their way to help a stranger even when there’s nothing to be gained from doing so. I think I had forgotten that. I really do. It’s easy to be cynical and pessimistic about humanity and human nature but then something like this comes along and makes you think that maybe people really are good at heart. 

There’s ample evidence to suggest otherwise, but right now I’m feeling grateful and positive about humanity as a species and I’m going to try to hold onto that feeling for as long as possible. 

You know the drill, I rely upon Patreon money to live so if you want to contribute, I sure would appreciate it. https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace