September 26, 2021

SO, to begin— neither Alan or I have ever, EVER picked up a hitchhiker.. until yesterday 😳We were driving through the forest, so I naturally put on the soundtrack from INTO THE WOODS (as one does)... We were literally just discussing the meaning of the story… venturing out of our bubbles / comfort zones thus inviting both education and danger, etc, when on a twisty mountain road we suddenly stumbled upon a middle aged man and his dog standing next to what appeared to be his broke-down truck. We passed by… then we each simultaneously had an INTO THE WOODS “ah haa!” moment where we slammed on the brakes and decided we should back up the car and offer to call someone for the stranger or offer some sort of help. Before our car could fully slow down, both the man and his dog jumped into the back seat and asked us if we could take them to a village about 10 miles down the road. All of this would have been fine-ISH except upon entering the car, it was clear that the man (and quite possibly his dog) was super, super drunk. Like could barely talk, DRUNK. But there we were… a man and his possibly drunk dog, barreling our way through the alps towards an eventual drop off at some unknown village we could not understand. We just rolled down the windows, turned up the volume and went with it.

The most we learned is that this man (and quite possibly his dog) was the biggest METALLICA fan on the planet! Every other word (all in French) was about Metallica. Of course all we could offer him on our playlist was Broadway musicals, but he would just laugh and turn the topic back to METALLICA. However, the less interest we expressed in his love for Metallica, the more loud and passionate he became. I think we got contact-drunk from his breath.

We suspect that the “broke-down” car was not actually his, and he and his dog just needed a ride and discovered standing next to a parked car usually did the trick

I have no photos or video of this event because I was busy taking video of road signs as evidence for the internet sleuths and the eventual Good Morning America piece when they discovered our bodies. But of course all was well. The man and his dog were so grateful for the ride. So, the moral of this story IS… don’t help others.