I shouldn't have argued with the girl. At least not when she was the one driving the car.
So it came to be that I was stranded somewhere west of downtown Columbus, with $4 in my pocket.
She was crazy, but I was stranded. And it was definitely the ghetto - I was too far out of my element to describe it properly.
I was too scared to be angry, and I didn't even care about the cold.
I grew up in the upper-middle class suburbs, see. Manicured lawns, fresh paint, windows without bars and unlocked doors.
You don't really understand how divided this country is until you spend 27 minutes in unfamiliar territory. This was America, only a few miles away from where I rest my head every night, and it might as well have been Uzbekistan. And it is sad this division exists - and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just in my head - considering it was 2008.
Pretty much everything I know about the ghetto came from watching "Boyz n the Hood" or listening to N.W.A.
So for the first few minutes I just stood there on the sidewalk. I threw a hooded sweatshirt over my head and just waited for something bad to happen.
It's like I was expecting some siren to go off in every crack den, in every gang member's house alerting them that there was a skinny white kid on the block ready to be mugged.
As open-minded as I've always tried to be and as respectful as I've tried to be of everyone, every ill-conceived notion I had about the lower class raced through my mind.
I had it planned out if some guy pulled a gun on me.
First I thought I should just give him the $4 and save myself the trouble. My mom would've kicked my ass if she found out I risked my life over $4.
Then I decided not to be a pussy, and instead knock the hypothetical mugger to the ground while taking the gun - apparently in my head I saw myself as Jason Bourne - and pistol-whip him until the cops came.
What the hell was I thinking? Cops don't come to the ghetto.
So with that realization, I made my way to the nearest bus stop.
My quick-paced walk was mimicked that of the sewer rats and alley cats nearby.
Years ago when I was living at home, I went to pick up my buddy Denny for a soccer match. He lived in a Hispanic neighborhood. I got the address wrong, and poked my head in through the open front door shouting, "Hello? Denny?"
A small Mexican girl inside looked at me terrified, and I was pretty sure Denny had no sisters, so I left quickly.
When I finally got to Denny, he told me the little girl who lived two doors down was his little cousin, and had called him up after I had poked my head in.
"Un gringo esta en mi casa!" his cousin said.
I had a new respect for Denny that day. He lived among his own people because it probably made his family feel comfortable - apparently I had been the first "gringo" on the block for a long while, if ever - and it's for the same reason white people clump together in suburbs.
But other times, when he was attending my predominately-white high school or simply venturing outside his neighborhood, he certainly would have felt like an outsider being the only Hispanic guy.
After finding myself in his shoes for just five minutes and that's all it took for me to feel uncomfortable and out of place. Perhaps it wasn't the crime I feared as much as being the outsider. We're always afraid of what we don't know.
Back in present time, I finally got on the bus after 27 minutes in the ghetto and took the long ride home, unharmed and unaffected. Back to High Street, back to relative comfort.
Graham Beckwith is The Lantern's Arts & Life Editor. He can be reached at beckwith.29@osu.edu.
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