The boy was cautious and before stepping up wanted to know where I was heading and if I was alone. I chuckled a bit thinking to myself that I didn’t have to let him in at all, but I just smiled and held out my hand, “Ted Parsons, I’m driving across the country to see the sites. Virginia is on my list. Whom do I have the pleasure?”
The boy looked up at me and grabbed my hand, “Ben Sands. I’m a Junior at GW, and this is my girlfriend Jennifer who is also a Junior, and we need to get back there before school starts. I don’t have a car and my parents really can’t afford for me to fly so we thought we would hitch as far as we could before spending the money on a bus or train ticket.”
Jennifer finally voiced up “I wasn’t about to miss out on the adventure, or let him go alone. If you wouldn’t mind the company we would be glad to pitch in for gas and food and help keep the place clean.”
I looked around, my RV is new, and I am very clean, but I see where the kids were going, no money and would work for a ride. I told them to hop on up and that my first stop tomorrow was the Grand Canyon, as I head East. It would be a few days before getting to Virginia where there school was if they didn’t mind the detour. They said they had left early figuring it would take some time to get back to school.
“I was just having a sandwich, care to join me?” I asked knowing full well, by the growling stomach noises coming from the both of them, that they were starving.
“Yes sir we would appreciate that very much.” His manners were sincere and not forced at all, good parenting I thought to myself.
I made a couple more sandwiches and gave them some chips and a drink. I let them eat in silence before I started in with my questions and concerns. “So Ben, what are you studying?”
Ben put his sandwich down and swallowed what was in his mouth before he spoke, “Well I started out as a Computer Science major, though I found programming was fun it just wasn’t interesting enough, so I changed my major to Information Technology. I am more of a people person, so working with people to help them set up an infrastructure or just basic desk top services was more inviting to me than writing code all day. I guess you can call me a nerd with a personality.”
We all chuckled. I was beginning to like this kid. I was feeling comfortable, a little too comfortable. I wasn’t ready to let my guard down.
“How about you Jennifer?” I said as I casually sat back on the couch.
“Jen, call be Jen. And no ‘Ben and Jen’ comments it’s just our names.” She started before answering “Psychology, but I want to go into Human Resources once I graduate. I’m not really into hearing people’s problems and most of the time I see their problems as superficial compared to what is really important in this world.”
I wanted to be taken aback but by her body language she was sincere and not trying to be rude in anyway. “Sounds like you both have goals and a plan, pretty ahead of the game as I see it.”
I noticed Jen was shivering. “You both look freezing. I have the hot water heater going if you want to shower while we wait here a bit. I can show you how to use the shower so you can warm up. I’m not leaving for a few hours. I’ll turn up the heater until then.”