Cruel Londoners
Stepping out of the underground at Gloucester Road tube station at 11.30pm with two of my children, we spotted a young man lying face down by a bus stop. People streaming out of the station gaily walked past, others stood chatting while waiting for the bus to arrive, tourists carried on crossing the road and generally life continued as normal. No one paid the slightest attention to the young man flat out on the pavement and struggling, in vain, to pick himself up.
Something about him struck me as different. He had an elegant stick next to him. We rushed over and my strapping, fit, six foot tall, rugby playing son picked him up.
This was no drunk. The young man had dreadful cerebral palsy. He had been trying to cross the road to go to the Burger King opposite the station when he had fallen.
What country is this where a disabled person is left splayed on the pavement and no one, repeat no one, bothers to help them up? What have we become? A nation of cruel, callous, selfish beings who assume, utterly wrongly in this case, that everyone on the ground late at night is a drunk who deserves to be left there.
Shaming!
HelloAmericans
1 Comment
Reader Comments (1)
I discussed this with my mother (who is in her 60s) to find out what she would do.
She said that what she would do is call out to the young man and ask him if he was alright.
Then, having assessed the situation (i.e. it wasn't a scam, and she wasn't putting herself in danger) she would then have done what you did.
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If it had been me, I would have been nervous to approach the young man, but I would also have had difficulty walking past.
So I would have been rooted to the spot, and I would have had to do something to help, even if it was to find an authority figure to help me.
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I agree with you, that it is depressing that someone can fall to the floor and people can walk by. Part of that is the crowd mentality (Dennis Prager has commented on this quite a few times) and part of it is modern society.
My mother once slipped and fell to the floor outside a shop, and she clearly remembers someone middle aged walking by and looking at her with the contept normally reserved for an alcoholic.
Ironically, it ended up being a couple of teenagers who came over to help her up ...