Cowardice

As I was about to get off the the #14 bus today, a cou­ple kids were giv­ing anoth­er kid trou­ble. There was some ruckus and swear­ing, and I heard one say, “give me your watch, take off your watch!” As the bus stopped the noise turned into phys­i­cal com­mo­tion and as I got up to get off, one of these kids – a skin­ny olive-skinned boy of about 16 I guess – tum­bled past me and his scoot­er crashed to the floor of the bus. I saw blood trick­ling down his cheek.

The oth­er two boys scram­bled off the bus as fast as they could, laugh­ing and jeer­ing and push­ing past the rid­ers who also want­ed to exit the bus, try­ing to avoid the unpleas­ant­ness going on around them.

A woman on the side­walk yelled some­thing I did­n’t under­stand, and the kid who’d been hit replied, “they jumped me.” That’s when I noticed that she was wear­ing MUNI patch­es and hold­ing a clip­board. she did­n’t move, but did assume a vig­i­lant stance and start watch­ing as though she might take some kind of action.

I fol­lowed the two youths to the cor­ner – it was the direc­tion I was going any­how. The two start­ed run­ning when they turned the cor­ner. I fig­ure they just did­n’t want to be seen run­ning away from their victory.

What trou­bles me about this is that even when I saw the boy bleed­ing all I had on my mind was keep­ing out of any con­flict. It did not occur to me to help the boy or try and stop his two assailants. I stood by and did noth­ing, just hop­ing that it would go away and that I could go on with my business.

I know many will say that I did noth­ing wrong, and that avoid­ing dan­ger is healthy. I have no doubt that avoid­ing dan­ger is healthy, but dan­ger is around us. We can­not avoid it except by per­pet­u­at­ing it. Those two boys learned that there are no con­se­quences to inflict­ing pain and tak­ing away what belongs to some­one else.

If the world is what we make of it, then I fum­bled an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make the world a more just place – The bul­lies won today because I let them.

TCS