As sure as E. Jean Carroll was just another old lady out buying underwear, some days I feel pretty safe — just an old man out buying some oat milk or a couple frozen burritos.

And then ...

Oh, sure, I haven't, and probably never will be, trapped in a dressing room by former President Donald Trump, but things happen.

As an example, my car required $715.19 worth of repairs Monday. I got an oil change and an inspection sticker at the same time, but I couldn't tell you what the actual repair work cost or what it involved. As they used to say of guys like me, I'm not "mechanically inclined." All I know is I gave the guy more than $600 for turning off my "check engine" light.

My mechanic is an immigrant from Syria, a nice fellow with blue eyes and a handlebar mustache who calls me "my friend."

Let me stop here to note that the city where I live has a number of immigrants from Portugal, Brazil, Syria and a number of other places. A lot of them call me "my friend." It doesn't bother me at all, but I've never figured out how people from so many different cultures settle on "my friend" as a form of address.

"Thank you, my friend," says the Pakistani tobacco store owner as he hands me my change and two cigars.

"How are you, my friend," the Portuguese immigrant restaurant owner says when I come into his restaurant.

"It's all right, my friend" my Guatemalan immigrant grocer says. "We'll have the oat milk next week."

Things like this are the reason why my wife can send me out of for a bottle of clear Gatorade, sugar free, and I'll come home with a 40-ounce bottle of beer. It's also the reason I write a newspaper column for a living. I get paid to notice and to think and to wander just a little bit. Anyway, I can always go back out and get the Gatorade, and I'll drink the beer tomorrow.

In the weeks after 9/11, another gas station-owning Syrian immigrant took my $20 for gas and pulled a roll of bills from his pocket. Those guys always have a big wad of cash in their pocket because they make change at the pumps.

"Thank you, my friend," he said.

"You all right?" I said. "Anyone giving you any crap about this 9/11 thing?'

"Just you, my friend," he said, laughing. "I'm a Christian."

"Stupid people don't know that," I said. "Take care of yourself."

I was a newspaper reporter then. Two days before my gas pump conversation, I'd written a story about several native-born American fools who fire-bombed a liquor store owned by immigrants from India, acting on the theory that one turban is as good as another.

"You see this?" the gas pump fellow said to me, holding up the wad of cash. "Every country should be like America. You make a business, you make money, you take care of your family. You give me money, I sell you gas."

The man who did my car repairs Monday goes back to Syria on vacation sometimes.

"Things are a little rough in Syria right now," I said to him before he left last summer.

"It's all right, my friend," he told me. "Where I go, the people are all Christian, so there's no trouble. I'm Christian."

And this is how you will plan your American vacation 10 years from now, after you've emigrated to Canada and bought a gas station.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

Photo credit: Pavel Neznanov at Unsplash