Purgatory in the West

Something happened the other day that reminded me just how different life's been since I moved back to Seattle.

I got angry.

Really angry, like lights flashing unpredictable angry. I haven't been like that since I left New York - and I don't care to revisit it anytime soon. But it was the same kind of angry I got in New York, like when that woman yelled at me for stealing her bags when I was actually running after her for having left them at an ATM. But this was a whole other level of low, and I'll tell you about it.

I was coming home from work, making a transfer on the bus at the Montlake freeway station. This is a busy intersection marked by an on-ramp to the highway, lots of University of Washington traffic and it was also rush hour and pouring rain. I walked up to the bus stop to see some people huddled under the bus shelter and one man standing far from it, near the curb where the buses stop (this is about 15' away). He was an elderly Japanese gentleman, probably in his 80s with a cane - and each time a bus came it stopped and opened its doors for him. He peered in but either couldn't see or couldn't tell if it was his bus - I'm assuming here, but he looked sort of disoriented. And he was soaking wet, wearing a baseball cap and a coat that was wet all the way through. He wasn't carrying an umbrella.

I walked over to him to ask if he needed help and he didn't seem to understand what I was asking, so I offered him my umbrella and helped him over to the shelter. What happened next was what made me so angry.
The crowd of people in the shelter sort of shuffled aside - staring at their feet and not making eye contact at all. A woman looked me dead in the eye and said exasperatingly, 'well, he was already wet! what did you expect, for me to give him *my* umbrella?!' I hadn't even said anything, I was just angry at nobody having made an effort. But when she said this, when she exposed how grossly insensitive and selfish she was, I lost it. My coldest tone burst forth, 'What the fuck is wrong with you?! He's like 80 and soaking wet and cold! What the fuck is wrong with you??!!' She braced herself and said it again: 'He was already wet!!'

Just for a moment, just a fraction of a second, I nearly reared back and hit her. I could taste the blood in my mouth and I could certainly hear the pounding in my head.

But I looked back at the old man and I knew it would have probably made him uncomfortable to see people fuss over him like that, so I clenched my jaw and walked away. When I got on the bus 5 minutes later he followed me on, returning my umbrella (I reluctantly took it) and sitting next to me. She followed on too, sitting nearby and mumbling the whole time, 'I don't know what she expected, was I supposed to give him my umbrella too? I mean, he was already wet for crying out loud.'

When I got home, I slammed the door and burst into tears. I had a good hard cry and then washed my face and went out to dinner with a friend.

I thought about it all later - what if I had assumed too much? What if the man didn't want to get on the bus? What if he didn't know where he was going? God, what if he was lost and was suffering from dementia? What if the woman's kid had just died or her husband had left or she'd run over her dog? And did the man get where he was going? Wasn't there anyone out there to look out for him?