'AITA for kicking my friend out of my car and making her walk home alone in the dark?' UPDATED

"AITA for kicking my friend out of my car and telling her to never call me for a ride?"

A little back story. I (24m) have a car rock, it used be my grandfathers and he would always have it in his car as a "lucky totem" and had it for about 30 years according to my mom, but he passed away when I was around 5. I don't have much to remember him besides a few pictures of us, his ring, a knife and this rock.

When I turned 18 my mom gave me the knife, ring and rock because my grandfather wanted me to receive these on my 18th birthday. I keep his knife in my room, wear the ring everyday and in the past 6 years I've had kept that rock in my car too and kept it as a lucky totem as well.

Sometimes when I drive ill have the rock in my hand and just rub my thumb over and it kind of gives me peace of mind. I don't really know how to explain it in words I guess.

So onto the story. This happened last night. My friend "Jane"(26F) car is currently in the shop for repairs of a accident (she got rear ended and it messed up her whole back end). So the past week she's has either been ubering or asking friends to pick her up when her shift is done and thats around 730 pm. Her work is about 30 minutes away from me and she lives about 10 minutes from me.

So last night she called me at 7pm and asked me if I could pick her up and so I said sure no big deal. So I pick her up and everything was fine until I picked up my rock and staring rubbing it, Jane asked what was in my hand. I showed it to her and said "this is my lucky rock I sometimes rub it whenever I drive." She asked to hold it and I gave it to her.

She told me that the rock is stupid and before I could say anything back she threw it out the window. I screamed "What the hell why did you do that?". Jane said "Rocks are stupid and lucky items dont work." At this point I'm probably 5 minutes away from her house so I pulled over in a grocery store lot and asked her to get out. Jane asked why I was making a big deal about so I told her the meaning behind the rock.

And finally I said "Until you find that rock and give it back to me, never call me for a ride and you're never allowed into my car again." She ended up getting out of my car and I drove to vicinity of where she threw it at and I spent about 2 hours trying to find it. During those 2 hours friends from our group called me asking what happened and I explained my side.

Most of the group knew the significance of the rock because I've given them rides before and they asked about it. Those ones are on my side but the last few are calling me the @$$h01e because I left a woman alone to walk home in the dark. I do feel guilty for kicking her out and I felt like I could've handled the situation better. So, AITA for kicking my friend out of my car and banning her from entering my car over a rock?

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

Picnut said:

As a finder of lost things (my family actually refers to it as my superpower), my recommendation is to start looking farther back from where you think it could be, and systematically work your way forward. Don't look at every single rock, but look for the shape/size and color of your rock.

Because it is familiar to you, it may be easy to overlook. Go through and do a general sweep. Then, go back and look closer. You will be able to narrow down areas that you are sure it isn't in, and have a better chance of finding it.

Suspicious_Ride_8102 said:

NTA I have couple of small rocks that mean to me and like a button and small things like that that are always in my house in special places to not get lost, as they remind me of dear moments. So, to have such a valuable thing thrown out, even if it were without the back story of your grandpa, is an @$$h01e move on her part

Capable_Ad_976 said:

NTA- who asks for something for the sole purpose of disposing it like that? You are doing her a favor, she can keep her opinions to herself for 30 minutes. I would expect an apology before speaking to her again and no more rides until that Rock is found!

[deleted] said:

I'm just trying to figure out what a 26 year old person is thinking when they decide to take enough of a stand on your whole scene to throw your property out a car window and call it stupid. What kind of child is this? What other BS have they pulled?

And shanici said:

I would have driven her back to work and left her out then and there honestly

EDIT from OP:

I will update if I do or don't find the rock. Thank you everyone for the kind words it really means a lot. I haven't found it yet but I am getting a group together to help me search for it Friday. A few people have asked for updates so I'll probably give a more detailed one on Saturday or Sunday.

As promised, he later shared this update:

Hello! A lot of people have asked for a update regarding this, I ended up looking for the rock on the day I posted it (Wednesday) and the day after. I couldn't find it on those days either.

I called the friends who were on my side and asked if they were free Friday so they could help me look also, the ones who were 'against' me were also willing to come look because my other friends explained to them the importance of the rock and are now fully on my side.

Friday comes along and we(there were 7 of us including me) started searching the whole street, we took the advice of some very helpful commenters i.e. throwing another rock out the car to see where it could land, searching farther up or down the street and searching the other side of the street too.

One of my friends (Rick) ended up finding it about 200 ft. down from where we were searching. I screamed and basically jumped on him crying, I told him thanks and asked the group if I could buy them all dinner as thanks, they said sure so we all agreed on pizza and beer. Then we went to Ricks place to eat, as we were talking the topic of Jane came up, someone asked if she's still part of the group.

All I said was "I don't care if she's in the group or not, I'm not gonna not gonna force you guys to stop being her friend, I'll be cordial and make small talk with her and that's it." So as of right now Jane is still part of the group because two of them have been friends with her longer than the formation of the group (10+ years?).

So the next day I call jane to let her know what happened, she immediately apologizes and doesn't give any excuse as to what happened or why she did it, she does feel guilty and told me she understands if she's out of the group.

I just told her what I told the group and also "Its going to take a long time for me to trust you again and maybe even longer for me to call you a friend." I ended the call after that and thanked my friends again for looking.

So that's really it I found my rock and Jane is still apart of the group but is like 4 arm lengths away from. I'm happy as hell for finding the rock! Thank you everyone for the advice and kind words. It really means a lot that and thank you so much!