Be the first to know about breaking news, articles, and updates.
The Coast | News, events, restaurants, concerts and Burger Week for Halifax, Nova Scotia
Home of the Best of Halifax Reader's Choice Awards, the award-winning independent newspaper covers the Halifax news, politics, events, concerts, movies, restaurants, and nightlife scene.
I fell on a patch of ice this morning. You stopped to light your cigarette, looked at me on the ground and then quietly kept walking. You, sir, are a piece of shit. Like, would it KILL you to ask if another citizen is alright? What is wrong with people in this town?
—Bruised ass and ego
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2019.
8 Comments
I agree common courtesy is not what it used to be, and people tend to only care about themselves and not helping their fellow citizen. That being said, without any more information then what you wrote, you seem to be assuming a lot about the individual that didn’t ask if you were okay. I’m just saying, there could be NUMEROUS reasons why they didn’t ask, and yes one could be that their an inconsiderate acehole, OR they could actually have a legit reason for not asking you, which you don’t know about. It’s easy to assume everyone’s an acehole, harder to be the “better person” and give people the benefit of the doubt….
It’s cool these days to not give a damn about others, don’t you know? We live in an era where it’s “funny” to make Holocaust jokes online and where when somebody is drowning, you’re more likely to get somebody talking a selfie next to them or filming it for YouTube views than you are to get somebody who will reach out and help.
Hey Jeff Jeff, don’t disagree with you at all, but that still doesn’t take away from the fact that there could have been any number of VALID reasons this person wasn’t able to, or decided not to help. It’s also cool to jump on mob bandwagons and ask for peoples heads, without all of the facts and a bunch of assumptions, just as cool as it is to not care about others as you state.
I mean hey, 90% chance the person was being an acehole, but also a 10% chance they weren’t, and if you give into the 90% feeling then your kind of an acehole for ASSUMING something about someone you know nothing about and dismissing the idea that they may have had a good reason for not offering help or asking if the person was okay.
@Uncreative1 I see what you’re saying, but c’mon, let’s be realistic here. This person thought smoking a cig was better to do than to question if the person who had fallen was okay? I could assume that maybe he genuinely didn’t see/hear the fallen person, maybe he was afraid to help, etc. but that’s a far-fetched assumption at best. The cigarette-lighting thing sort of gives away where this unhelpful stranger’s true priorities lie. If you don’t want to help a person yourself, you can use your phone and call 911. You can flag down a car or pedestrian to help. But ignoring them and lighting up a cigarette instead is just callous no matter which way you spin it. It’s worth noting though that we don’t even know who this random stranger is, and thus why not make assumptions based on his behavior? It can’t hurt him/her/them any.
Maybe s/he paused then & there to observe whether or not you were ok & once coming to the conclusion you were, quietly walked away
One outta remember the world does not revolve around us
Btw, your judgement of that person as “a piece of shit” inevitably makes some others judge you as kinda immature & asshole-ish yourself….
Hey Jeff Jeff, and I get what your saying, it is a far reaching assumption, but its also an assumption this was an able bodied, sound of mind, person that was “normal” and just decided to be like that.
I like to think I’m a decent guy, and would for sure help someone in this situation, as I have previously. That said, given my mental health issues, on the right day, those days where I want to throw myself into traffic in order to not deal with the world anymore, I too might have lit my smoke, and kept it moving once I saw the person was in no mortal or extreme danger. And that is real life example that can’t be debated.
Again, it’s just a huge assumption that this person was in a position to help and instead just acted like a giant ass, just to be an ass.
Broken back. Would not help you up. No longer smoke. Cigarettes, that is. Grow up.
@Agra Phol That’s understandable, but even if you’re in no physical position to help a person, wouldn’t it still make sense to call somebody to help them, or go seek help from a nearby business? Then again in all fairness, not everybody owns a cell phone to call for help. But still I’d like to think that a reasonable person would at least do whatever is in their mental/physical capacity to do to help somebody, or maybe I’m just being naive.