So I'm on my way home, carrying six grocery bags. I get on an escalator to go down to the subway platform. The guy in front of me is getting off the escalator around the same time and presses the stop button on the escalator, nearly making me fall down (and causing me to miss the train - and causing himself to miss the train because he would have made it if he hadn't stopped to press the button). I made it down to the platform in time to see him walk down the platform systematically spitting twice on each bench. He didn't seem angry or unstable or fucked up or anything, he seemed perfectly calm and cool and collected, it's just he was doing these weird things that were vaguely cruel to random strangers. I had no idea what to do! I kept an eye on him and tried to memorize his description (but he was a really nondescript white guy and I can't even tell age in men), but I was completely flummoxed. This was completely outside the range of things I thought might possibly happen, and I couldn't come up with an appropriate reaction.
This is why I don't think it's appropriate to blame the people on Tim McLean's bus for running away. I wasn't going to dignify this blame with a response, but my experience on the subway today just reminded me of it too much.
We've all given some thought about what we might do in every extreme situation we've ever thought of. We've thought about what we'd do if we saw someone being swarmed in the subway or pushed onto the subway tracks. We've thought about what we'd do if we were on a hijacked airplane, then rethought it after 9/11. We've thought about what we'd do if we walked into a bank robbery. We've thought about what we'd do if we were taken hostage. We've thought about what we'd do if we were deported to Syria. And we've thought about what we'd do if we witnessed some guy trying to kill some other guy. However, in all the mental scripts we've run through, I don't think anyone ever thought there wouldn't be any yelling or scuffling or altercation first, that you'd just wake up on a bus to a guy with a knife in his neck. They were, quite understandably, completely unprepared for that situation and had no idea how to react.
In most situations in life, if you can't think what to do and are completely unprepared for this situation, you get the fuck out of the way. The people also had their self-preservation instincts pushing them out of that bus, and Tim was already quite clearly dead.
I don't think it's fair to blame people who find themselves in a life and death situation that they never in their craziest ideas ever thought would happen at all ever anywhere or anytime in the world for not instantly pulling themselves together and saving the dignity of a dead man. Even if you think it would be appropriate to blame them for not helping if, say, a nice loud altercation had broken out first to give everyone plenty of warning, you can't expect them to have the same presence of mind under these circumstances.
3 comments:
Very nice post.
I was horrified that people blamed other riders on that bus! When the body is filled with fear, adrenaline takes over and makes the decision for you. It's a milisecond between flight or fight. Most people move first towards survival.
And what got me most was the hypocrisy of it, as if the blame-throwers would have behaved any differently.
Perhaps the weirdest response I saw was the letter in the G&M that said McLean's life would have been saved if one person on the bus had had a gun.
Unless that one person was beheader dude.
But even if someone had a gun, my understanding is the guy just quietly knifed him. A gun can't unknife a person.
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