Why so harsh?

I have just returned from a wonderful visit to L.A. where I spent time with some of my closest friends, saw my niece and her fiancé play the Macbeths, and attended an emotional memorial for a long time friend and playwrighting colleague.

There is one incident from that visit that has continued to niggle in a way that is both uncomfortable and amusing.  As a friend and I were walking in downtown L.A., a young woman asked if she could use a phone.  I know one should never agree to something like that with a stranger, but I also believe it's important to be kind to people, to assume the best about them, and to help out when possible.  So I offered to dial the number for her, then handed her the phone, standing close by in case she bolted.

It sounded as though she spoke to her mother (because she said "Mom"), a quick conversation, then she handed the phone back and I went on my way, feeling rather virtuous.

Later that day, a text showed up from that number.  It said "Are you in the car you stole?"  (Actually, it said "Ate uin the car you stole?")  That took me by surprise, of course.  I texted back "She borrowed this phone.  Please don't text this number again."  I assumed that would be the end of the exchange.

So I had an even bigger surprise when, the next afternoon, I got another text from that number.  "FU".  That was all.   And that's the part that has been staying in my mind.  (Although the idea that I was dealing with car thieves didn't put me at ease either.)  I found that blunt message both amusing and puzzling.  Why did that person take the time to say 'fuck you'?  What was s/he mad at me for?  Trying to frighten me?  Maybe s/he felt threatened by knowing that I now knew that car theft was involved and so tried to act tough so that I wouldn't report it?  (I did call the LAPD, by the way, but since I wasn't the registered owner of the car and didn't know the license or any of the details, they were not at all interested.)  It just seemed like an unnecessarily brutal thing to say for no reason.

Me being me, I'm fascinated by moments like this, moments outside the fabric of my own life.  When I encounter someone who acts so differently from how it would ever occur to me to act, differently from pretty much everyone in my life, I can't help but ask unanswerable questions, make up stories, wonder about who that person is, what her life has been like, how he came to see the world as he does.

I'm not foolish enough to continue to engage with this person in order to get any of those questions answered, of course.  But the FU has stayed with me, and left me bemused and sort of sad.  It seems to represent a meanness, an anger, a violence of spirit that has to be learned somehow.  

But at least I learned that I should never again lend my phone to a stranger.  So there's that.