Museum Gawkers

When you go to a museum, you look, stare and marvel at the either interesting or boring displays. Yet when you see an accident on the freeway you gawk. You stare, and marvel. You observe the accident the same way you do looking at a 2000 year old mummy in a museum. You also do it when you see someone in need and no one is helping. You just gawk. At least I do. I did. It’s called Bystander Effect and we are all guilty of participating in this humanistic flaw. We see someone in trouble, but there are other people around so we assume someone else will help, call 911 or contribute and other type of aid. It’s sad, pathetic but human. I was human two days ago. There I was, in no hurry to get anywhere, stuck at a red light. To my left; a man in a wheel chair at the cross walk waiting for the ok to cross to the other side. No use of his legs at all, they were pinned back. He carried an amount of stuff in his lap and arms that should have required a bag to hold everything, but that’s all he had, his lap and arms. He dropped everything. Doesn’t sound to bad right? Have you ever seen someone try to gather items they have dropped while in a wheel chair? Not easy. As he would get something and put it back in his lap and go down to pick another, the first would fall. Talk about a frustrating situation. And all I did was gawk. Contemplating if I should try to merge out of traffic to help him, the light turned green and a few honks followed that forced my foot on the gas. I drove off….others drove off…who helped him? No one that I saw. I should have. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. He wasn’t in any physical danger but still, he needed someone’s help and as far as I know no one helped. He was just a museum display that we all gawked at.