Dear Editor:
I thought that people had changed since September 11th but I had an experience recently that showed me they really haven’t all that much. One evening last week, I stepped into a deli in Hoboken and ran into a former co-worker who I had not seen in a few years. We stood talking for a while near the cash registers. All of a sudden, I heard a noise behind me. I saw my friend look up and then felt a tremendous blow to the back of my head and heard things crashing and falling to the ground. I stood there in shock from the impact, felt my head, took a few steps back and leaned against some shelves. I did not fall down. I did not lose consciousness. But the blow was extremely severe and I was worried about the consequences of the injury. The people in the store just stood and stared.
I then learned what had happened. A customer walking up behind me had bumped into a metal pole used to remove cans from high shelves. The pole had fallen, or it seems to me had flown, from it’s precarious position hooked on a box and had come crashing down on my head. She apologized to me and said that she had not done it on purpose. I told her I knew that but felt that I should have her name and phone number just in case. The store workers (or possibly owners) who had witnessed the entire accident because it had happened right in front of them suddenly became mute. They would not look at me. It was after much begging that one of them gave my friend the name and phone number of the store. The woman who had bumped into the pole refused to give me her name. She walked out of the store and down the street. I wondered if she thought about me later. Wondering if I was OK or was just happy that no letter can now possibly arrive from my lawyer in her mailbox.
Since then I have been wondering about the rules that apply to helping strangers. I think the rules are as follows:
1. If something happens to you and to a stranger, you help each other.
2. If you see something happen to a stranger, you help them.
3. However, if you see something happen to a stranger and you might have been partially the cause, you run away or act like it didn’t happen to protect yourself.
On September 11th, we learned that the world can change at any moment. That this world is not as safe as we thought. Also, that a trauma can bring people together. Last Wednesday evening I learned that in certain trauma cases, people haven’t changed.
I walked away alone from the deli that evening. Two blocks away, I entered the Police Station. They called an ambulance for me as I filed a police report.
Nan Turner