Got a joke for you: What do you do when a homeless guy comes to sit next to you on the train? MOVE!!! Get it???? I sure as hell don't. If you haven't figured it out, it wasn't a joke. It was meant to describe the poor sense of character so many of us have.
So today I'm on the path train heading back to jersey, and a homeless guy walks into the car and sits two seats down from me. If you think I'm going to talk about how disgusting the homeless guy was...think again. Yes he did look a little dirty, but what can be expected??? He's homeless. He can't afford the luxury of taking a shower everyday and washing his clothes once a week. As the guy took his seat, a guy across from him said "Man, don't sit there...take your ass to another car," to which the homeless guy replied "I will...I just need to sit down for a minute," and the rude asshole said "No move now...you stinky motherfucking bastard." The homeless guy didn't move, and I'm even happier to say that the asshole did. As if this wasn't upsetting enough, I noticed that I was the only person who didn't have a problem with sitting so close to him. A lady took an empty seat next to him, and then quickly moved. As the train made stops, many people looked at the two empty seats between him and I, made a move toward the seats, then took one look at him and went to the opposite end of the car. After a while he did get up, and took anothre empty seat in between two other people. Before he could even sit down, the two people on the sides of him got up and stood for the remainder of the train ride. WTF? Now I can understand if the guy smelled so bad that it prompted nausea, but that wasn't the case. Yes, he looked dirty, but I couldn't smell him, and I was sitting the closest to him. So people couldn't have been steering clear b/c of his odor. He wasn't talking to himself, or do something like spitting mango on the ground (I saw another homeless guy do that one time), so why were people so bent on not sharing a seat with someone who could be any of us in the blink of an eye? What is wrong with people??? He's a human being for fuck sake. No one even thought to think "If that were me, and people were automatically looking at me and running, how would I feel?" It's funny how some of us are so quick to judge people, then insult them just based on how they look. It's even funnier when those of us who are judging and insulting are being judged and insulted everyday because of how we look. I wanted to ask the asshole "Did you ever think people feel the same about you?" He would be a key target for racial profiling. But he can talk about not wanting to sit next to someone because of how they look? Are you kidding? But aside from the prick, I have to consider the 5-7 people whose actions spoke just as loud and clear as his words. I have to really wonder what kind of hope we have for our future if we can't even sit to someone who is fucking poor...a product of a society that could kick us in our ass at any given moment! I guess the difference is is that they wear their poverty on their sleeve and can't hide it like so many of us can. I mean really, we were all riding a train so that tells us a little something about where we fit in the social class paradigm. None of us have drivers taking us to work everyday; no limo is waiting for us when we walk out of the house. We ride the train for $1.50 one way. But how easily we can pick out someone who has it harder than we do. Will we ever get to the point when we aren't so blatantly rude and insensitive of our fellow man's condition? Can we get beyond ourselves long enough to give another human being respect regardless of how he looks or may smell????
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3 comments:
You are right to feel disturbed by how uncompassionate people can be towards the poor when the only difference between them and their less fortunate brothers is OPPORTUNITY.
perhaps if these people sat too closely they would have realied that this man was a human being. by decidely disconnecting him from the rest of the human race he would be less jarring to their realities an they could go about their daily commute in denial that people like him exist. we dont like to admit that we force people to live like something that is less than human and when confronted it makes us recognise that we as a society are failing. he served as a reminder as to what they too could be without their 9-5, in essence, he symbolised 'failure.' and most people are too proud to admit to failure. sitting next to this man would have been that reminder that many are too proud and ignorant to bear. but our job in creating true social change is not to point fingers or take the moral high ground b/c at some point we were/are all guilty of this kind of denial on a certain level.
hopefully this blog will spur some good deabte southern girl! looking forward!
:)
Y'know...I read this and thought about Blindness by Jose Saramago...if you haven't read it, you're missing out. He writes this great social commentary from a very simple premise: what if everyone were to suddenly go blind? What would happen to mankind and humanity?
Even if those people on the train didn't have sight, they probably would've created some way to differentiate themselves from the homeless man...and that's sad as shit. What does that say about us as humans? Our relationships with each other? Our need to always resort to an "us" vs. "them" mentality? The homeless man on the train isn't a microcosm or a glitch in the matrix...most people don't want to admit that to themselves though.
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