I am going to take a little side trip from my usual blogs today and share with you something that happened a week ago and still has me extremely annoyed, which is putting it mildly.
While running an errand for my wife last Friday I came upon a scene that sickened me. An elderly lady, in her 80s, was sprawled on the ground in a parking lot. She had apparently tripped over a speed bump. That in itself would be disturbing, but what really got my ire up was the fact that people just kept walking by her without giving her any assistance. I stopped my car, rushed out and went to her to find her conscious but bleeding rather profusely from the head. She was coherent and lucid. I told her to not to move and that I would be back in about 15 seconds. I rushed to my car, as I was going to gym after running the errand, grabbed my towel from my bag and rushed back. Again, in just that very short period of time, there were three people that just walked by. I pressed the towel to her head and talked to her to see how she was doing. She wanted to sit up and against my better judgment I assisted her. After all, has anyone ever tried to stop an elderly person from doing something they really wanted to do? How did that work out for you?
Here is the thing, sitting there with her and talking, I again noticed people just walking by. No one stopped to ask if everything was all right. No one asked if they could help. We are not talking about a sketchy or poor part of town, as if that would be a reason not to help your fellow man, but a middle class area part of town.
I knew that there was a medical office across the street and I wanted to get her there for at the very least a quick look over. When she indicated that she could get up, I held her hands and guided her up and then held her up against me as we slowly walked across the street and into the clinic. Note, people had stopped at this time, but to watch. Not help, just gawk.
I got her to the clinic, sat her down, went up to the nurse’s station and explained what happened. She was not a patient at this clinic, but the nurse stated that she would get a doctor to look at her as soon as one was available. I sat with her to wait. About 15 minutes later, a doctor did show up and said that they would look after her and make sure that she would be all right and informed me that it was okay to leave. After being reassured I said goodbye, but before I left, I got the biggest heartfelt hug imaginable and a thank you.
I am not sure why I should get the thank you, after all, I did what I thought any compassionate, understanding and caring human being should do, help their fellow man in a time of need. To those that just walked by, that could have been your mother or grandmother. Would you have just walked on by in that case? What would you think of those that would? Have you forgotten the basic covenant of being human? You know, the one about helping your fellow man. Have we gotten so into the ‘me’ and ‘I’ that we have forgotten about the ‘we’ and ‘us’? Are we not told from an early stage to have compassion for all creatures that inhabit this planet that we share, regardless of species? I had and, even a week later still, have some very colorful and descriptive words to describe those observers of last Friday. I will not share them here due to the nature of the language.
It has been a week and I am sure that you all have gathered that I am still upset, not only because of what happened to this lady but more, because of the insensitivities of some people. I went back to the clinic after going to the gym to see if they could give me any kind of report. They told me she would be okay and that the only damage was the scrape on the head. There was no concussion, or, other trauma. She was picked up from the clinic by a relative. What upsets me the most is, I still cannot answer the question: ‘What is wrong with humanity?’