He had a swastika tattooed on his hand

Joy, Elissa and I were driving home from North Carolina today, and our car broke down near Richmond. Literally five seconds after we pulled off the road, a little red pickup pulled off to help us. The two most redneck men - guys - got out and asked if we needed help.

Just picture the situation. Joy wasn't even wearing a shirt when the car died. The a.c. had stopped working an hour previously, and she was down to her bikini top, driving along 295. My sister was showing so much cleavage I kept waiting for her entire boob to fall out, and all of our shorts were appropriate for the trashiest country concert.

One of the guys was covered in tattoos, and they were either prison tats, or they were from a non - professional source, or maybe the art was just damaged by the sun, because he had one hell of a tan. I kept noticing his skin though, because it was so damaged. He had one tattoo of a bomb on his arm, and it looked like it was about to fall off, like a giant scab. There were numerous scabbed over sores on his arms, too, but they were hard to see because of all the ink. And of course the nazi symbol on his hand, which was comforting in a ridiculously backwards way - because Joy has a good friend with swastikas on his fingers, and because after all we are all blonde-haired blue-eyed Germans and Poles. I shouldn't even think that, let alone write it.

When someone stops to help you like that, you want to think that it's basic human kindness. It's like the Good Samaritan. I listen to enough country music to almost implicitly trust anyone with a truck, some camo, and a confederate flag somewhere in the vicinity. And there is something romantic and appealing about the fact that these were two men who jumped at the chance to help three damsels in distress.

But at the same time. I really didn't trust the one guy. It's not that I didn't like him. Their names were Tom and Jim. Jim's brother died serving in Iraq, and he hadn't seen him since 9/11.

And then the tow truck driver was big and very black, and we got in the car with him, but there was a name and a number painted on the cab, so that means it was perfectly safe, of course.

Oh, and then we walked from the Pep Boys to McDonalds, past a pretty ghetto mall, scared to death of stepping on a needle, and trying not to catch anyone's attention. I'm not sure, but I think we stood out a little bit.