I allowed myself to be rescued the other day.

That’s a big deal for me, you see. I am self-confident, self-sufficient, self-aware. I do not need help from anyone, anytime, with anything, ever. Full stop.

It makes me uncomfortable to need people. Desiring their company or requesting their help is different, it implies that although their existence makes my life easier, I could still survive well enough without them. But to depend on others, to have no other solution than to throw myself upon the charity of my friends, to inconvenience them and open myself up to judgment, is terrifying. I have learned how to avoid asking for help, the avoidance being so potent as to nearly be a survival tactic.

But I allowed myself to be rescued.

I had taken a bus to the mall in a desperate attempt to save myself from the loneliness and unproductivity of my tiny dorm room replete with distraction. For someone who claims he doesn’t need people, it’s an odd twist that I do better work around them. Particularly strangers. I digress.

I went to the mall to do my homework. I set myself up at a table in the food court next to the bubble-tea stand at 6pm and scarcely looked up for the next few hours. When I finished my last paper, I packed all my things away and did not feel nervous about the time.

I am, after all, self-sufficient. Spending nearly every waking moment as a teenager completely anonymous in the thick busyness of downtown Seattle has made me bus-savvy and unafraid of walking considerable distances through city streets. So I walked to the bus stop, checking my watch as I went.

It was twenty minutes past 10pm. I didn’t think anything of this, in Seattle the buses run until 11. And doesn’t Olympia have a nightline route?

The bus stop was cold, twenty-eight degrees of breeze pricked my gloveless fingers. That was fine. I’d be on the bus soon enough.

I checked my watch again. Half an hour past 10pm. Where was the bus? I noticed a route schedule hidden beneath a long-unpruned shrub and rose stiffly to look at it. The last bus comes at 9:53pm. For the first time in my life, I had missed the last bus.

Undaunted, though sighing at my misfortune and the bother of it all, I began the trek back to campus. Through the mall parking lot and up Cooper Point Road, only stopping when it crossed Harrison and the train of strip malls ended. Cooper Point Road is very long and very dark. Drivers are often heedless of speed along it, I know this because I am too. I was dressed in mostly black, a convenient wardrobal accident of that morning that would certainly ensure my death on this two-lane road.

The idea of walking back to campus was so unsafe that it could be deemed reckless. I am not always known for making good decisions but I do not have a death wish.

Lost for solutions, I sat on a frozen bench in the Rite-Aid parking lot and watched two men drag boxes of supplies into the darkened Starbucks. Realizing that since the only way to get back on my own would be to walk, and walking at this hour down that road is stupidly dangerous, I had to ask for help.

Cursing myself for my lack of planning ahead, cursing InterCity Transit for only running their nightline on weekends, cursing the fact that it was a Monday night, I called my friend and tried not to sound sheepish or desperate.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Ki. It’s Logan.”

“Oh hey Logan, what’s up?”

“Can I ask you a favor?”
“Sure, what?”

“I made a slight error and missed the last bus back from Cooper Point. Can you come pick me up?”

“Yeah, no problem! I’ll be right there!”

“Thanks! No rush, don’t worry.”

I am the picture of nonchalance. Yes of course, I’m totally fine out here in the cold and I really could wait all night, and hey, even if you can’t come get me I’m smart/brave/clever enough to get back on my own.

I wished she was here right now. The cold had set in and my hands were numb. I was tired and had used my last scrap of innovative energy to call her and act like it really was no big deal.

I don’t know if I learned something that night. If I did, it was probably closer to “plan ahead” than “ask for help.” I should have checked the bus schedule before I left, or I shouldn’t have lost track of time, or I should have taken my car to be fixed during winter break so that I would have it when I returned to school.

I know what I should have learned: That I am capable of making friends who like me enough to drop everything and rescue me from a bitter January night without even thinking about it. And that it is impossible to get by without occasionally needing a literal or metaphorical lift from one of your angels.

Like I said, I’m totally self-sufficient. Depending on people has only ever created pain for me and I refuse to willingly subject myself to that.

A hungry man places exponentially more value on a sandwich or an energy bar than a well-fed man does. It took Ki twenty minutes total to pick me up and probably cost her about thirty cents in gas, but for me that twenty minutes was worth my entire night and that thirty cents was worth every single dollar in my pocket.