One of those moments where one is presented with a choice. A choice to mind your own business or to get involved. For good or ill I choose to get involved.
It was nothing heroic! Nothing that would re-define my life, give it meaning. It was just a quick decision made on the spur of the moment that may or may not be the right thing to do. There was very little time to think.
As I drove east on Ness in the west end St. James/Crestview this morning before 11:00 am there appeared in the middle of the road a distraught young woman wearing just a short sleeved tee-shirt against the +7℃ weather with no purse frantically waiving her bare arms obviously trying to get someone to stop and help. There was only a couple of vehicles in front of me but those persons weren’t having any of it and zig zagged around her leaving it up to me I figured, so I stopped and rolled down the window to see what was up. It was only on the second attempt that the woman was able to tell me that a vehicle had taken off with her baby inside. She had my attention. So I told her to get in the back seat and continued east down Ness as the young lady scanned the road in front of me for the vehicle in question while telling me that she thought it would be turning off on Moray, but no. There it was turning south on Sturgeon.
I wasn’t about to do anything drastic so keeping to the speed limit I followed the small black car south while asking the woman if she had a cell phone in order to call the police and report the kidnapping of her child but she said the phone was in the car and I noticed that she didn’t seem too keen to get the police involved. While I was contemplating what to do next as I certainly wasn’t going to give her my phone or risk a $200 fine by making a call while driving, the light at the Portage/Sturgeon intersection turned red and I was able to pull alongside the black car which was in the far left turn lane and without a word the woman immediately jumped out, leaving my rear drivers side passenger door open, zipped around the back bumper of the other vehicle and jumped into the back seat through the unlocked door where there was clearly a baby basket and all the bags and blankets you would normally associate with a newborn. The driver, a young black guy with full round features and a bald head didn’t seem to react so since the advance right turn was active in my lane it was time for me to split. Reaching behind myself I grabbed the door frame, closed the door, turned right onto Portage and circled the block to get back to the strip mall and complete my business there. It all turned out very well I thought as there was medium traffic, no laws were broken, nothing was stolen from my vehicle and this couple could continue their very irresponsible behavior somewhere else, hopefully not on the street!
Now I’ve had time to think about what happened and I suppose I shouldn’t have let her in the vehicle at all. What I should have done in retrospect was to pull into the parking lot and phone the cops letting her deal with it that way. All my luck was good this particular time but it could have just as easily gone all pear shaped on me.
I don’t regret getting involved, just with my method and I suspect it has something to do with what I experienced on a street in Moscow, Russia where I lived in 2004. I was walking with my wife back to our flat with two grocery bags and a woman was thrown from the back seat of a passing car landing in the street right alongside us. She was disheveled, extremely out of it and wearing a very short skirt with no underwear. No one said or did anything, except my wife who insisted that we help. How I thought!? I think I had been in Moscow for a couple of months by that time but there was no denying this woman sitting on the road in front of me with no underwear screaming and crying in distress.
So I put down my bags and with my wife's help picked her up and placed her on the sidewalk pavement leaning against a kiosk which brought down the wrath of the woman proprietor who was seriously pissed at what we had done provoking a savage response from my wife about women taking care of women when a young tattooed girl showed up with her big lens SLR and began taking pictures of this street scene. These types are all over Moscow centre taking pictures that they hope to sell to various web ‘zines or what have you. This brought forth more of the same from my wife, women helping women, which was ignored as was the first rant and then we saw the cops down the street taking notice of the commotion. That was all it took. My wife went quiet and I picked up our grocery bags and away we went, quickly. Likewise the shutterbug with the kiosk hag retreating into the interior of her little hut.
I noticed when I lived in Moscow that most of the expats, when amongst themselves, were quite critical of Russian society. They complained about everything, from the bad body odor in the Metro to the corrupt cops and the harsh attitude of the citizens. They reversed themselves when they thought Russians were listening but it was clear that they all thought it was better at home, whether that was the US, Britain, France or what have you. I even fell into this way of thinking until my wife, a born and raised Muscovite told me to stop.
After returning to Canada in late 2010 I can assure you that within certain parameters it’s the same everywhere. I’m pretty sure that given that girls appearance this morning and the nature of the community in this part of the city, no one was going to stop for her.
So I’m glad that I did.
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