What Do You Mean By “Civilized”?

I’ve been distributing lunches to homeless and hungry people for six months. After a night and a morning of driving rain, I brought food today to people living under the Water Street bridge on either side of the river. Two things struck me:

1) I have no idea how we can call our society “civilized” when we allow people to live under bridges, in parks, and on the street.

2) I continue to be amazed at how kindly, how respectfully, and how courteously I’m treated by people who have nothing. Only occasionally have I been met with disrespect, and it’s generally by people who are traumatized and mentally ill. Everyone else? They are so kind that they put people who have everything to shame.

The contrast was very apparent today. After distributing lunches and having some really wonderful contact with people, I headed home. I was standing at the corner, across from my apartment building, when  a large truck came into the intersection and then stopped just before the crosswalk. I made eye contact with the driver and he let me know it was okay to cross. Once I was across the street, an older gentlemen saw fit to mansplain to me about traffic laws, saying, “That truck had the right of way. He was already in the intersection. You shouldn’t have crossed.”

I have no idea why people think it’s a public service to police the behavior of other pedestrians on a public street, but it’s happened to me before — again, after someone driving a vehicle stopped, made eye contact, and let me know it was fine to cross in front of them. I find this kind of behavior annoying. So I interrupted him and said, in my most cheery and assertive voice:

HEY! ENJOY YOUR DAY, WON’T YOU?

I can’t wait to get back to the park to distribute lunches on Monday.

© 2014 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg