An incident

As I was standing at the corner of 23rd Street and I Avenue, waiting for my movers to arrive last Friday, I witnessed something that horrified and shocked me -- although, knowing this city, it should have done neither.

I half saw a little old man in a wheelchair that was crisscrossed with shopping bags on the back, slowly wheeling himself along the pavement. I looked away, and, when I looked back, one of the bags, a paper one, had split under the weight of a gallon can of water. The can lay open on the ground, water splattered across the sidewalk, and the bottom of the bag gaped precariously open, ready to spill its remaining contents.

I watched him for a bit, unsure of whether to approach him and offer my help, or to pretend not to have seen him. My good side finally took over, and I inched towards him.

“Do you need help?” I asked him, stopping a few feet away.

“No, no,” he replied gruffly, looking at me suspiciously. “I don’t need help.”

He seemed so averse to the idea of anyone lending a hand that I backed off, although I continued watching him from the corner of my eye.

He painstakingly took the bag down, placed it on the pavement, and slowly proceeded to make space in his other bags for its contents. He was standing partially hidden by a telephone booth to anyone approaching from the opposite direction, but the torn brown bag was further off to his left, closer to the center of the pavement.

As I watched, a young man, probably a teenager, wearing an insolent, purposeful look on his face, walked down the sidewalk towards the man and the bag. In one swift motion, he kicked the bag, scattering its contents – a mini-TV, some crossword puzzles, various bits and pieces. The TV rolled down the pavement and came to a rest a few feet away, still within reach of his feet. He kicked it hard again, and it rolled away again.

The old man looked up at him with a blank face, almost as though he was unsurprised by what was happening. I, perhaps more naïve than the old man, who had clearly learned a lot from a harsh life in this city, gaped after the youth, my jaw hanging, too shocked to even say anything. Even if I hadn’t been so stunned, I’d probably have been too afraid to confront him, for fear that he might pull a gun on me.

The TV finally landed outside his reach, and he continued walking without so much as breaking his stride. The TV lay near me, so I picked it up and walked up to the old man, and handed it to him. “Thank you,” he said. “Maybe I do need help.”

As I tried to gather his things, another woman, wheeling a little cart, stopped. “You need another bag,” she informed the man.

“No, no,” he insisted. “I’ve plenty of bags. I’m fine.”

She fished out a bag from her cart anyway and held it out to him, but he adamantly refused to take it.

She put it back and bent down to help gather his things.

“Please, just leave me alone. I can handle it. I’m fine,” the old man insisted.

We left his few belongings in a pile and stepped away. And, as I continued watching him, and saw him slowly finish reorganizing his belongings, sit back in the wheelchair and move away, I thought back to the look on the face of the man who had so purposefully done such a small but hateful act – how uncaring it was, how hard and cold and dark. And I wondered what would make someone’s heart so black – that, in walking by, he could have either stopped to offer to help the old man, or he could have done what he did. What made him choose to do what he did?

In the large scheme of things, this is not a life-changing act, and maybe he was just having a bad day. But, his face seemed to say otherwise – he had the cold, cruel face of someone who enjoyed inflicting pain. And the person who kicks over a vulnerable person’s few possessions today might go on to take a life tomorrow. And then what?