That would have been a surreal experience I bet.
It got better. It was outside of Cave Junction Oregon which is about an equal mix of hardcore redneck, hippie, and junky. This whole area had a major 60's revolution influence going on even in the 90's when this happened. You couldn't walk five minutes down the road without someone offering you a ride. Seriously, when the elementary school let the kids out at the end of the day there was always a few that went right up to the road and stuck their thumb out to hitch a ride home.
That night was when the Halebop Comet was in the sky. Of course after the run in with the cat i was hyper aware of every single sound and I never took my hand off of the gun in my pocket. Maybe twenty minutes after the cat i hear this car behind me start to slow down. Like I said it was normal for someone to offer a ride but this car slowed to probably between 5-10 mph (not sure of my conversions/bear with me) when they were still a good 50 feet behind me, passed me, and then kept going like that for another 30 feet or so before they stopped.
That was all weird enough but as walked up behind this car I could tell there was something very off about this guy. Once I started talking to him I figured he was probably some combination off his meds or overmedicated but he seemed like might if been on a massive dose of acid or maybe meth or a combination of the 2.
When he first looked at me he was very clearly surprised by something (I was a fairly lean 15 year old boy with midback length hair/he thought I was a girl/more on that later). He offered a ride and normally I'd be totally comfortable with it but this guy was so off that I didn't want to mess with it. Not even with the security of being armed with a handgun. I told him "No thanks, I'm almost where I'm going and I'm really just out for the walk anyway". He asked if I needed anything, I said no, then he asked if I was sure and asked if I could use some money. I told him I had everything I needed. At that point he asked me if I new about the comet. I told him thst my dad stidied astronomy and astrology and that I grew up with telescopes (true) and that we even had one on the porch that we'd been watching the comet with (not true).
I was creeped out by this guy from the moment I saw his mannerisms while I walked up from behind the car. He was clearly trying to create some kind of repor and I just kept giving him the shortest response that stayed polite but said, "Nope, I don't want shut to do with you. Be in your way". He finally rolled off.
About 15 minutes later it was dejavu. The same weird "slow down, creep up, stop way in front of me" shit. The whole time I'm walking back up to this car in thinking "what the help is going on with this guy". As soon as he saw me he recognized me and got a completely different surprises expression. He freaked out. I'm talking scared/panic/desperate fear. He burned off out of there. That's when it all came together. That's when I realized that he thought I was a girl the first and that he was way too high to recognize me 20 minutes later. Then I realized he was probably out prowling around with some very bad intentions judging by how reacted in such a fearful and paniced way.
At that point I seriously ran through the scenario of what everything is judge seen meant and what to do. To this day I'm certain that he was at least freaked out by what I might have thought he was doing and im pretty dam sure he was out to rape someone that night. In that moment I considered, for the smallest fraction of a second, if I should shoot at him but but I really didn't have to think about it to realize that I couldn't that sure of what he was actually doing and at that moment he wasn't actually a threat to me. Then I had to consider that he was very likely to still be a threat to anyone else he might come across so I seriously considered shooting low at the back of his car to scare the shot out of him but decided that was still too risky. It was a .25 auto that wouldn't have made anywhere near going all the way through the back of the car into the cabin and I was ridiculously accurate with it but I decided that it was still too much of a risk and not enough certainty about what he was actually doing.
To this day l, 22 years later, I still sometimes if he might have gone in to do who knows to some that I might have been able to stop by even just scaring the guy enough to make him seriously doubt getting with that shit. Surreal for sure.
I haven't even looked at just how long of a post this is but its a hell of story. I figured it was worth taking the time.