Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
This is how your life could end
Not too long ago, Michele and I were on our way to shop at the now-defunct Prana Foods on First Avenue in the East Village when we came upon an elderly Chinese woman who had fallen and seriously cut her head. Along with a few other kind souls, we stayed with this poor disoriented woman until the ambulance came to drag her into a frightening whirlwind of Western medicine madness.
Eventually, four cops arrived in the scene. They immediately harassed a hippie-looking guy in a Food Not Bombs shirt who just so happened to be the goodest of all good Samaritans there. Then they went through the woman’s grocery bags looking for I.D. and saw it as laugh-out-loud funny that all they found were bananas. Finally, they realized that I was just standing there (in actuality, I was waiting for Michele who wanted to stick around holding the woman’s hand until she was taken away).
One of the cops pointed at me. “Are you with her? If not, keep moving!”
His tone was that of a human who knew he could say or do anything and get away with it. I calmly told them that it was my wife who, unlike others, was offering some human contact in this woman’s time of need. The cops backed off. One of them lit a cigarette and they proceeded to talk among themselves.
The ambulance arrived. The woman was taken away. The cops left. Michele and I continued on to the health food store. Life, as they say, went on.
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
