n late fall of my junior year in college, I was having a pretty wild time. I was a visiting student that year from a small, private women’s college near my home. Now at a large state university 400 miles from watchful parental eyes, I thought I was finally enjoying college the way it was meant to be, with unrestricted freedom.

One night at my dorm, a group of friends and I sat chatting. One of the popular guys on our floor told us about a cult movie that he regularly attended with his friends. The movie was called “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a lurid musical spoof on bad science fiction films. Catering mainly to a younger crowd, it ran each Friday at midnight a few towns away.

My friend said that he and others dressed up like the film’s provocative characters, acting out the script below the screen. He suggested I join them for an alternative to the campus social scene by coming to the movie as one of the “transvestites” who would dance to the “Time Warp.” I accepted.

Later, under his supervision, I applied dramatic amounts of white powder foundation, dark blue eye shadow, fiery red lipstick and gobs of black eye liner and mascara. My dark, curly hair I wore loose and wild. Next I dressed in a black suit with white socks and black suede shoes with a chunky heel. I giggled when he showed me his costume consisting of only a pair of shiny gold acetate underwear. Leaving the dorm that night, I enjoyed the surprised reactions we received.

Some five of us climbed into the back of a van. There wasn’t much to see on the wide, open road, except rows of corn silhouetted against moonlight on both sides.

At the theater, I found comfort in the dark as I winged my first performance. Though having experienced an unsettled feeling from the raucous crowd mentality, I also basked in acceptance from my new friends and a roomful of strangers.

At the film’s end, I lost sight of my fellow “actors” during the confusion of the mass exodus. Searching in vain, I wondered if they might not be changing in the rest rooms, and checked there. I didn’t expect my friend to go home in just his gold underwear. Not finding them, I anxiously hurried to the parking lot toward the van. When I didn’t see it, I frantically scanned the dark stretches of road beyond the theater, while the last of the parked cars turned out onto the road and sped out of sight. Then my last faint glimmer of hope was snuffed out as I turned to see a man in a red jacket locking the theater door.

Anger rose up within me. I felt rejected by the friend who had invited me there. Impulsively, I stomped out toward the road to make my way home.

At the entrance, I paused. My position on the floor of the van had prevented me from noting which direction we had entered the lot. Looking back and forth, trying to recall that last turn, I finally went left. Nursing my resentment, I thought it would serve them right if something terrible happened to me. But as the light of the theater area faded into an ever darkening, desolate road, my indignation was gradually replaced with fear. “I’m miles from home, in an unfamiliar town, dressed as a transvestite, without any money.” I thought. Walking faster, I blinked at imagined shadows lurking behind the trees and ferocious dogs in the distance. My eyes were blurred and stung from makeup under my contacts. It was cold. My feet ached in borrowed shoes.

To my right there suddenly appeared a sign welcoming me to Kodak Park. Aghast, it occurred to me I had been walking in the wrong direction. Though unfamiliar with the area, I knew enough about the location of this corporation to know that it was not on the way home.

I heard an engine before turning to see a low pair of headlights approaching. With the darkened Kodak facility to my right, the scary uncertainty of the road ahead, and a white Volkswagen stopped at the curb to my left, I experienced a moment of panic, wondering what was to become of me. I imagined fleeing pursuit toward a horrific demise in the shadows. Choosing the only other option of meeting my fate head on, I cautiously stepped toward the passenger window being rolled down, and peered inside. There was a pause, as the man behind the wheel and I attempted to make out each other’s faces. His startled look caught me off guard, until I remembered my appearance. He simply asked where I was going, and offered a ride. With a mixture of apprehension and relief I got in the car. He told me that he was returning home to Canada after a trip. I asked him why he would turn around and go all the way back in the direction he had come from in order to give someone a lift. He just said he didn’t mind.

I felt compelled to offer some explanation and recounted the evening’s events. He quietly listened, and I began to relax, as the frightening path I’d just struggled to navigate for some two hours melted behind me. “I’m hungry,” I suddenly found myself saying. Ashamed at my impulsiveness, I imagined this Good Samaritan thought me rather wretched at this point. I kept quiet the rest of the way, even as he pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four hour supermarket just two miles from campus. What was he doing?

As he got out of the car, I pushed open the passenger door, thinking for a second that he planned to have me walk the rest of the way. Unsure of what to do, I followed along behind him, surprised with his quiet actions, berating myself for telling a complete stranger that I was hungry. Inside the store he selected a sandwich, bag of chips and two sodas. Tagging along after him back to the car, I suddenly felt like a child. By a total stranger, I had been picked up from the blackness of the wrong path, brought back home, and was now being fed.

Once in the car, he handed me the food he’d just purchased. I suddenly realized, in a rush of gratitude, that my desire to be a part of the “in” crowd caused me to make poor and dangerous choices that evening. Yet, here in my utter need and shame, was complete acceptance and nonjudgmental concern. My eyes welled with tears as I stared down at the items in my lap and thanked him.

Arriving at the campus, I told him I couldn’t repay him for his kindness to me that night. He just looked straight ahead and softly replied, “Maybe you can do something nice for someone some day.”

Back then, I wasn’t a Christian. Over the years since coming to know the Lord, I’ve thought about how God has mercifully spared me that time and many others during an all-too-reckless youth. If you had asked me back then about angels, I would have pictured winged and haloed creatures in flowing robes who played harps somewhere on the outskirts of heaven. But since then I’ve grown to believe that God can send them to us anywhere we are, anytime we are in need, demonstrating his amazing love for us with skin on it.