This is an opinion column

Just as I was turning into a stranger’s driveway last week, I asked myself an odd question: “Is this safe?” I was stopping to ask directions, but the homeowner didn’t know that. For a moment, I wondered if I might get shot, something that wouldn’t have occurred to me a few years ago.

No, I didn’t get shot. The homeowner pointed me back about five miles and told me I’d missed my turn. I thanked him and went on my way.

My husband is a caterer and sometimes I deliver party supplies—napkins, plates, and glasses to his events. He’d be behind me in about an hour, he said, with hot food and chafing dishes—everything needed for a wedding rehearsal dinner.

This event was in what we used to call the country, before Huntsville, Alabama spread all over, with suburbs and new neighborhoods popping up like mushrooms. About halfway there, my GPS voice stopped talking. It was as if she gave up since all the streets were named River something, and wound around to other streets named River something else.

I glanced at my phone map which looped me around to yet another River neighborhood. The road I was supposed to be on ended, and just at the intersection some teenager—I’m guessing—had twisted the road sign so nobody could read it.

I drove on until I was out in the country again. Cows looked up from their grazing. Trucks sat in dusty driveways. The billboards were all about new developments coming soon. I just wanted to find the one where the party would be held so I could deliver my goods.

It was then that I asked the stranger for help the way I used to do, before the grim news about people getting shot for going to the wrong address (in Kansas City), driving down the wrong driveway (in rural New York), or getting into the wrong car (in Elgin, Texas). Surely we’ve all done these things at one time or another. I know I have.

Last year I came out of my eye doctor’s building to find that my key didn’t fit into my car door. It wouldn’t unlock. A voice behind me said, “Ma’am, you can keep trying, but my car just won’t open with your key. You’ll have to try your own car. The middle-aged woman laughed at my folly. She didn’t shoot me. I know that a person of color may have had a different experience. I am white, older, and gray-haired.

People usually give someone who looks like me a privilege pass as a harmless grandmother, but maybe that doesn’t happen now that we all seem to be on edge. Maybe we should wave white flags of surrender or signs that read “I come in peace” if we go onto someone else’s property.

If someone saw me drive up their road, would they shoot first and ask questions later?

Recently, that’s what trigger-happy people tend to do. We know that Alabama has one of the highest rates of gun deaths in the country—even for children—which makes for broken families and broken hearts.

These shootings make us fearful and homebound and cautious. The next time I wander out into the countryside, I’ll make sure my GPS is working.

And I’ll hope we can one day feel safe in our own state again, safe enough to ask for help from a total stranger.

You can contact Beth Thames at [email protected]