You don't have to be a d*ck just because you live in NYC

Warning: this is not the usual garbage-related post. But it is about indifference. Not the  indifference to litter that I usually rant about here, but indifference to the plight of our fellow human beings. If you don't want to read this, I understand, but please take away this message at least: If you see someone sitting/lying down/slumped over, especially during these frigid times, please call 911 and report it. It's not normal for people to be sitting or lying down immobile on the street, especially in the cold. Please don't just assume "oh, it's some drunk dude, he'll be okay." Report what you see to 911, and let the operator decide whether or not to send an ambulance/cops. Thank you.

I just read this horribly sad story in the Daily Noise. Sounds like a man froze to death on the Upper West Side, and people walked over/by/around him for who knows how long. He was sitting on the steps of a freakin record store. Finally someone realized, hey, this guy may need help, and flagged down an ambulance on Tuesday morning. The man was "wearing shoes with no laces held together with socks."

May he rest in peace.

This story really strikes a chord with me, because in my neighborhood, particularly on Roosevelt Avenue near the train station, a person passed out on the sidewalk is a pretty common sight. It's so common that folks seem to take it for granted that the person is just really drunk and "sleeping it off." Of course, it is extremely dangerous to drink to the point at which you pass out (think potassium imbalance/cardiac issues, etc., or choking to death on one's own vomit). When I first moved here, I was alarmed by the sight of people actually lying right on the sidewalk. I called 911 the first couple times. The EMS people would pull up, take the guy's pulse, and yell in his face and bang on his shoulders until they got him to stir. I think I stopped calling 911 after those first few times because I felt like I was wasting emergency resources; after all, they were able to just rouse these guys with a bit of yelling and send them on their way, which made it seem like a drunken stupor wasn't really that critical. Well,  it actually IS life threatening to drink to the point of passing out. And the current frigid temperature adds another level of danger: hypothermia, and the real possibility of freezing to death.

True Tale That Is Somewhat Relevant: This past Saturday around 10pm, I decided to take a walk. I like to walk around late at night, listen to the new SLEATER-KINNEY album, etc. Okay, I was also going to buy a chocolate bar. The store that sells my favorite-choc-at-the-moment (the milk chocolate covered cracker by Ritter) is right by the train station. It is super busy at all times because they offer Quick Draw, and a decent candy and beer and cheap cigar selection, as well as those flavored tobacco products that look 1000 times more carcinogenic than regular cigs. Anyway, yeah, there are always cabs parked outside waiting for customers from the busy train station. And there are restaurants and a sports bar right there. En otras palabras, the area was very busy, even at 10pm. So imagine my shock/horror when I saw an elderly man in a thin coat sitting on the curb with SOCK-CLAD FEET frozen to the pavement (which was covered in ice and snow). There was a pair of sandals near him, but for whatever reason (perhaps he had slipped, or maybe he just had to sit down and then couldn't get up), he was sitting there in just socks. The really shocking and disgusting thing was that people were walking by/around/over him, and not even blinking.... which begs the question: When did it become okay to leave a human being to sit, literally frozen to the ground beneath him, and go about our business as if nothing was wrong??
**Well, for those of you who are wondering what happened next: I asked the candy store guys to call 911, which they did (I did not have my cell phone on me). A very kind young fellow in the store overheard me, and followed me outside to see if he could do anything. When I approached the man and asked if he was okay (uh, duh, obviously not), I didn't expect him to answer. But he said "help me" very faintly (ie, he was probably too frozen at that point to speak). He held a shakey hand towards me. I hadn't wanted to just yank his feet off the ice- afraid that it would rip off some layers of skin- but the helpful guy from the store started trying to help the man stand up. The two of us got him to a standing position (which wasn't easy; turned out he was a pretty big guy), and the man lifted his own feet off the ice (with a sickening sticking/pulling-away sound). *It should be noted here that there were several strapping men standing in front of the bar at this point, watching us struggling to get this man up.* Once he was standing, we quickly slid his sandals on, and helped him walk a few feet to lean against the building while we waited for the ambulance. We didn't try to walk him inside because (1)he was way too shakey, and once we got him leaning on the building, I didn't want to try to move him again for fear of a bad fall; and (2)I expected the ambulance to arrive momentarily. For whatever reason, the ambulance actually took a few minutes longer than I expected (or maybe time just seemed to slow down; I really wasn't timing it, but out there in the freezing cold with a man who was in iffy condition, it felt like forever). We gave him gloves and a hat. [He hadn't been wearing a hat or scarf or gloves...or, of course, shoes.] And he kept saying "I'm dying." Ugh. Eventually the ambulance arrived. I think they were FDNY; they were wearing that uniform with the boots and suspenders. The guys were really very kind to the man. I was afraid that they would be like Why the eff did you call for a guy who is standing on his own two feet? But they seemed to recognize right away that he was in fact very far from being okay, and took him away by ambulance ASAP. I just hope he is okay.

A guy chilling on my steps a few months back.

True Tale #2: This happened a few months ago. I was walking home from the mall along Broadway. When I was just about a block away from Elmhurst Hospital, I saw a man lying on the sidewalk, sort of propped up against the side of the building. I guess I just registered him as being a semi-passed-out drunk guy, and was going to walk by. But then a young woman with a kid at her side waved me over. She did not speak English well, but I gathered that she was obviously very concerned about the man, and she did not have a cell phone. When I knelt down, I noticed the smell of ketones, and realized of course that this man was not drunk, but was in a diabetic crisis. I asked him if he was diabetic and he nodded and motioned toward the small backpack lying next to him. I think he wanted me to take out his medicine, but with a freakin hospital across the street, I wasn't about to administer medication to a stranger on the street. Luckily I did have my phone and called 911. While we waited, I tried to keep the man calm. He kept gesturing for me to get his medication (?) from his bag. I tried to find it, so I could give it to the EMS people and they would at least know his name and what he was on. It looked like he had packed an overnight bag- there were a couple pairs of socks folded in sock balls, and a change of clothes, and a fresh-looking sandwich. It made me so sad to see these things. Perhaps he had known he needed to go to the hospital, and was heading there when he collapsed. Thank God he didn't collapse in the middle of the street though! Anyway, the point of THAT story is, yeah, I'm an a-hole too; I was just going to walk by this guy, assuming he was a drunk. If it weren't for that nice lady who waved me down, I would have, and then who knows if she would have found someone willing to stop and call for help. Ugh. Very scary. But the ambulance arrived pretty quickly... actually, like 4 emergency vehicles arrived, all at the same time (it's feast or famine with emergency help apparently!-- just kidding, these guys and gals are awesome).

So, the point of this longarse post is: Let's look out for each other! That means, let's not just step over passed-out people anymore. I definitely do not mean to sound preachy here; after all, I am guilty of having such an attitude myself, and I have walked by/over many people who probably were in desperate need of medical attention. But just because something (like passed-out-in-the-street-people) is a common sight, that does not mean it is "normal" or acceptable. I guess this does tie in to my usual ranting about litter: I mean, litter is something that is so common that people have become indifferent to it. Sadly, it seems like the same thing has happened with regards to PEOPLE IN CRISIS. I'm going to make a conscious effort to keep my eyes (and heart) open to people from now on. Because it's definitely not okay for someone to die on the steps of a store and not even be noticed for who-knows-how-many hours.

Herein ends my rant.