While I was at Ako (Aloisiuskolleg) there were a couple of incidents that can only be described as unfortunate... I wasn't involved in either one - I was just a bystander - but they both bothered me because they are evidence of the unavoidable "inherent randomness" of life... Now - I've been hesitant to blog about these incidents because I'm not sure what I'll say about them... So - I guess I'll just have to find out :-)
The first incident happened during "ancient Greek" class. The teacher was indeed "ancient" but he wasn't Greek - he was a former German ambassador to Greece. Regardless - he was an excellent teacher - he had devoted his life to the subject matter and was remarkably passionate about it...
And during the first week of the school year he asked a kid in the front row a question and got no answer... So he asked again - and the kid said "Pardon me??"...
Which prompted the teacher to yell "What's wrong with you!! Are you DEAF???"
And one of his classmates answered for him: "Yes sir - he is..." ... The teacher had completely failed to notice the two hearing aids...
I felt bad for the young man but I felt worse for the teacher... There were tears in his eyes as he spent the next 5 minutes apologizing and offering to do whatever he could to accommodate the disability...
You know - he would have given anything to take it back. But you can't... He'd been teaching for nearly half a century and had probably said "Are you deaf?" to hundreds of distracted students over the years... And this one time the student was...
His failure to notice the hearing aids was just a flicker of inattention amidst a lifetime of teaching yet it resulted in hurt and regret...
The second incident involved much greater harm:
It had snowed the prior night and during recess all the students were sliding down a sloped roadway onto the "playground". Pretty much everyone wore leather soled shoes back then and with a running start you could slide a long way...
By that evening (after study hall) the "sliding path" had turned to solid ice and a bunch of us were out there enjoying ourselves. Eventually I went back inside but continued to watch from the window. And then it happened...
Two boys were walking back up to the top - one on either side of the sliding path. And when they saw one of their friends coming down they linked their arms in front of him.
Now - I have no idea what they thought would happen... Maybe they expected him to duck ... or maybe they thought they could stop him... I don't know...
But what actually happened was a fractured skull... Even 45 years later I get sick to my stomach thinking about it. I can still see his legs flying out from under him and his head hitting the ice...
The victim recovered from his injuries but never returned to Ako - and the two young men who (unintentionally) caused the harm were immediately expelled... So that few seconds of "stupid" changed the course of 3 lives... I'm sure they would have given anything to take it back... But you can't... That's what makes our journey through life the 'mixed bag' that it is - and it highlights the fact that nobody completely controls their destiny...
So - how is it that (as a society) we've come to expect "perfect lives"? Bad things happen (Duh)... Sometimes there is obvious fault... But sometimes it's just one of those things... A child crying in the back seat... An insect buzzing around... A hasty lane change... Or checking the mirrors at the wrong time... And someone gets hurt... You wish you could take it back... But you can't...
Other people point fingers... As if they never in their entire lives had a single moment of inattention that could have caused the exact same harm... Wrong... It happens to all of us - no matter how hard we try... Most of us (like me) are lucky enough that it has never happened in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Knock on wood.) So we go on our merry way... And rarely give it a second thought...
What's the point? Heck if I know... If I did I could probably stop taking my meds :-) Yeah - I guess the bumper sticker sums it up nicely ... Sh*t happens.... It doesn't get much deeper than that :-)
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3 comments:
You did well. And you are right. A second can change everything. It's a hard lesson to learn, but a good one.
Even hearing those stories makes me feel sick. I like to think that most people feel empathy when they hear stories like these, but I don't really think they do. I don't know where people get the "it could never happen to me" attitude...must be a blissful sort of ignorance right up until it does happen to them.
This made me think of that bus that ran over 5 pedestrians a few weeks back. That driver did a nice thing for one person by making a courtesy stop in an unsafe location and destroyed a bunch of other lives in consequence. Yet no one seems to feel bad for her...no one realizes that she isn't a sociopath on a killing spree...that shit happened to her. Shit that can never be undone. Guess that's sort of the definition of tragedy...the nonwillful happening of shit.
Yup - it was thinking about that bus accident that prompted me to frame the stories the way I did...
ANY one of us can become a victim OR a 'villain'. As Cate said - a second can change everything...
BTW - Most people do exist in a state of denial: After all - sanity IS the ability to ignore reality.
If that weren't true nobody would ever leave their house :-)
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