Today I was walking down Van Ness with some co-workers and a disturbing thing happened. I heard a loud quick scream and looked 10 feet to my right and found an old emaciated woman being squished by bus doors. The automated doors had accidentally shut on her and she was too frail and weak to escape. To make matters worse, she had a full leg brace and was on crutches. As soon as I looked up I was shocked to see what was going on, and instinctively ran up to help open the door for her. My co worker joined and the woman eventually freed herself. It all happened pretty quickly and I focused on the task at hand, but could NOT HELP BUT NOTICE this one man who had been right in front of the woman when it happened, but did nothing. He was doing nothing when the woman was being squished, and he continued to do nothing when my co worker and I pried the doors open.
I mean, come on! In the words of my co-worker "what a dick!"
Luckily, my faith in strangers has been redeemed by a few other meaningful instances this week.
1. This Monday I was headed out of the bart car when I saw a blind man, no older than 30, having trouble getting out of the station. I walked past him, unsure about what to do. I was half way up the escalator when I said to myself "what the heck are you doing angela, HELP HIM, DURRR!" I ran back, and timidly peeked past the pillars to see if the guy was still there. He was, but now he was holding the arm of a middle aged gentleman who was leading him to the right direction. Seeing this, I remember feeling just...like super warm inside. Once I got back on the escalator I kept turning back to look at the man, and signaled my approval with a huge grin him. He didn't see it, so I kept turning back to grin, then i felt really kind of creepy so I stopped. I walked slowly after leaving the escalator, and saw that the man continued to wait for his new blind companion, elbow out and ready to help. What a man.
2. At the SF Pride I met this girl named Jasmine. Total stranger, who happened to interject during my conversation with another person on my team. We ended up going to Starbucks together because it was really early and for the next few hours we just... sat around and talked. Fast forward, it's a month later and she's leaving for Columbia tomorrow. We decide to meet up for dinner and she goes out of her way to meet me after work, bart to a place that is convenient to me, then spills out nothing but support and advice for my pre-med application. She asks for nothing in return. She is a kind genuine soul and I hope to see her again.
getting tired so going to make these next two very brief
3. On the way back from SF to Berkeley, an elderly hispanic looking woman sits next to me, with a HUGE boquet of flowers. She sits down and I comment "they smell good" to which she responds with a huge smile. We continue to converse in broken Spanglish for a good 10 minutes, and she tells me about how she moved from Nicaragua 20 years ago, her daughter is a nurse who performed heart surgery on her own child, and that she teaches dance classes at the 5th floor in the Bank of America (at least that's what I interpreted-i may have not understood everything).
i realize I really like talking to strangers. I want to meet more.
