Occasionally throughout my life I run into situations where I can get an accurate gauge on humanity. Picking up hitch hikers, stopping for stranded motorists, seeing someone drop something they don't realize and picking it up for them...they are all really basic situations that happen all the time. What I question is how often does some one stop or help in these situations.
A quick example of this happened yesterday. I was in Golden Gate park attending an impromptu b-day pizza and beer event and a biker (as in a person riding a bicycle) was hit by a university of california police officer in a car. A lady that was also attending the impromptu b-day event happened to be a SF fire fighter. Due to her sense of duty she ran over to assist the police officer who hit the biker until the ambulance/fire truck arrived. That was someone who stopped and helped.
Let's rewind a bit further to Friday, March 13th. The inevitable doomsday for all mankind Friday the 13th...I had gone to SF State to watch Gators baseball take on Chico State, plus our broadcasting department was doing the broadcast so I was checking out the set-up they had going on. The Gators choked out a loss by making two errors in the ninth inning to cough up the lead and eventually lost in 12 innings.
So afterwards I had to go to the edit lab to finish capturing all my broadcast stuff from last semester and I told my buddy James that I would drive him home afterwards. So around 9 pm we roll out of the edit lab. James lives on 27th and Noriega. Sunset Ave. goes out the back of SF State and runs parellel to 19th Ave. but way out towards the beach. Here is a map of the general route of Sunset Ave.
I drive a 1990 Ford Ranger and the gas gauge is broken. It has been broken since I bought the truck when I was a junior in high school. I carry a 1 gallon gas can in the back of the truck in case I run out of gas, which admittedly happens more than I'd like to admit. Last time I had to use the gas can reserve I forgot to fill it back up when I eventually filled the truck back up with gas.
So I'm driving down Sunset Ave. at Vicente heading North towards Noriega. As you cross the intersection at Vicente and Sunset the road begins a slight up hill for the next block or two..and of course my truck doesn't have enough gas left in it and going up hill sends what gas you do have in your tank sliding to the rear of the tank making it even harder for it to be pumped into the engine...wallah! the truck sputters. I was currently in the middle lane which is not a good spot to run out of gas. Luckily I was able to coast into the right lane before the car died completely.
So now I'm out of gas with an empty gas can stopped in the right lane of Sunset Ave. in San Francisco. Luckily at this point it's about 9:30 pm and traffic is at a fairly low pace. James calls his roommates for help and they have been drinking so they're out. I call a mutual friend Sim and she is out with friends in North Beach which unfortunately is no where near the Outer Sunset where my car is located. Finally I settle on Ben, my old roommate. He is sitting on his ass doing nothing so he agrees to come down and take my empty gas can and James to a gas station located just a few blocks away.
While James and I are standing next to my truck on the road we begin talking about how odd it is no one stopped. We had already been standing there for about 15-20 minutes and the only attention we had gotten was funny looks.
All of a sudden a car on Vicente pulls over and a lady gets out. At first we're not sure if she stopped for us. But she begins to walk towards us. She is blonde, and wearing a calf length skirt. It was pretty cold outside and the fact that a lady stopped not dressed for the cold impressed me. She asked if we were all right. We answered yes we were o.k and that we had a friend coming to help us but thanks for stopping because she was the only one who stopped so far. She answered "well I lost a tire once on the freeway..."
Shortly there after another lady in a Honda Element pulled up behind us and turned on her flashers, rolled down her window and asked if everything was o.k. Again we answered yes, we had a friend coming to fill up the gas tank. She said o.k and drove away.
About 10 minutes later Ben showed up to pick James and the empty gas can up. I stayed with the car in case a police officer or somebody of authority showed up while they drove away. Standing there by myself sucked, it wasn't nearly as warm by myself and of course there wasn't anyone to talk to.
About 5 minutes after they left another guy in a Honda Element pulled up behind me and rolled his window down and asked if everything was alright. I again told him that my friend had come and was on his way to get me gas.
So far three people had stopped (two women and one man) and I appreciated all of them. About five minutes after the last guy in the Element stopped a guy came out of a house on Sunset Ave. and asked if everything was o.k. I'm assuming he had noticed that I was still there with the truck flashers on and finally decided to come out and check. I told him the same thing I told everybody else who had stopped. This guy brought with him a road flare which he lit and left in the right lane at the intersection to force people to change lanes earlier. I didn't think it was necessary at that time because Ben and James had already left to get gas but either way he was trying to help and it didn't inconvenience me at all to have him light the flare.
A few minutes later Ben and James showed up. I filled the truck with the one gallon and drove James home. I then proceeded to the CFN on 19th Ave. and filled up my truck with gas. All the while thinking about how I was stopped, blocking the lane for a total of 45 minutes and four people stopped their lives and offered to help. While I consider myself self sustainable in most situations like this I nevertheless appreciate the effort put forth by strangers with the overall welfare of their city and their fellow humans on their minds.
I don't know if four people stopping to help in that amount of time being stranded is a good sign or a bad sign for humanity overall but I am going to choose to look at it positively because it seems rather easy for no one to have stopped at all and what would that have said about humanity? The fact that people stopped at all tells me that there are people still around that do, on some level attempt to look out for other humans whom they do not share any other bond with except being alive.
So in short, Thank you
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