I Left My Kindness in a Bus Shelter on Avenue A
We all know someone like this. It’s the person you don’t want to stop and talk to when you see him or her on the street, yet has done nothing morally or ethically wrong to justify your ignoring that individual. It could be anybody, from any background, and the reasons for not wanting to spend any time with that person are varied: They invade your space when you talk. They are loud. They are terminally depressing. They are always on a soapbox. They tell the same story over and over again. They are hard to understand. They bore you to tears. They try your patience. Yet they are not bad people, and you feel they deserve your attention if they ask for it. In my case, it was a man who is mentally disabled in some way, and since I’m not a psychiatrist I wouldn’t begin to know how. He talks slow and with a slur. He shuffles when he walks. His movements are stiff. But he’s a decent fellow, as far as I know.
When I see him, which is not often, I stop to chat for a moment or two. Not because I want to, but because I think he would be hurt if I didn’t stop to talk to him. An acquaintance of mine who lived in the neighborhood, and whom he had met once did just that, ignored him when he saw her, and he hasn’t stopped talking about how she won’t acknowledge him any more. Yet, I understand why: You have to have patience because he is a slow talker and he is repetitive, will tell you the same stories he told you three months earlier, and six months before that.
I saw him the other morning, he was lumbering up Avenue A and I was waiting at the bus stop. He wasn’t close enough to see me in the bus shelter, but I saw him, so without a thought I sped out of the shelter and walked as quickly as I could to 14th Street to another bus stop and away from the man, whose name, I realize, I don’t even know, even after seeing him in the neighborhood for several years.
On my way to work I had to think about what I just did. Why didn’t I just wait at the original stop, and say hi to the guy? True he had a habit of hanging around until you went in a direction he wasn’t going, but so what? The bus would have eventually come. Instead I fled like Barbra from the zombie in Night of the Living Dead.
I’m not embarrassed to be seen with this man, as I suspect my acquaintance was. So why did I flee? Was it just because on that particular morning I had no patience for him? Was I selfish? Is it selfishness when he didn’t even know I had been standing there? And why can’t I just be honest and admit I don’t really want to have to talk to the man every time I see him? That last question I’ll deal with in another blog. But for now, what do you think?
When I see him, which is not often, I stop to chat for a moment or two. Not because I want to, but because I think he would be hurt if I didn’t stop to talk to him. An acquaintance of mine who lived in the neighborhood, and whom he had met once did just that, ignored him when he saw her, and he hasn’t stopped talking about how she won’t acknowledge him any more. Yet, I understand why: You have to have patience because he is a slow talker and he is repetitive, will tell you the same stories he told you three months earlier, and six months before that.
I saw him the other morning, he was lumbering up Avenue A and I was waiting at the bus stop. He wasn’t close enough to see me in the bus shelter, but I saw him, so without a thought I sped out of the shelter and walked as quickly as I could to 14th Street to another bus stop and away from the man, whose name, I realize, I don’t even know, even after seeing him in the neighborhood for several years.
On my way to work I had to think about what I just did. Why didn’t I just wait at the original stop, and say hi to the guy? True he had a habit of hanging around until you went in a direction he wasn’t going, but so what? The bus would have eventually come. Instead I fled like Barbra from the zombie in Night of the Living Dead.
I’m not embarrassed to be seen with this man, as I suspect my acquaintance was. So why did I flee? Was it just because on that particular morning I had no patience for him? Was I selfish? Is it selfishness when he didn’t even know I had been standing there? And why can’t I just be honest and admit I don’t really want to have to talk to the man every time I see him? That last question I’ll deal with in another blog. But for now, what do you think?
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