Wednesday, June 25, 2008

In Which I Do a Good Deed

Today was the first sunny weekday in a while, so I took the opportunity to visit King's Chapel and the Granary Burying Ground. Both were exceptionally busy, which reminded me that one of the things that I like about old graveyards is that they are generally quiet.

When I was leaving the Granary Burying Ground, I noticed a man lying on the sidewalk in front of the Park Street Church. There are a lot of homeless people in Boston so it's not really unusual to see people asleep on the sidewalk, but something didn't look quite right. I walked past, but then I started thinking about that video of all the cars driving by the elderly man who go hit in Hartford, and I was worried. I turned around, went back, and watched him for a minute or two and couldn't tell whether he was breathing. I tried to find a cop but couldn't (p.s. why couldn't I find a cop on the Common in the middle of the afternoon?). I finally spotted a firetruck and got a couple of firefighters to check the guy out. It turns out that he was having some sort of diabetic seizure so they called him an ambulance.

In the end, everything turned out well. The guy got help and I got to feel virtuous. I would have felt pretty stupid if he were just napping or drunk, but better I feel stupid than someone dies on the street while 300 people yammer on about independence and freedom less than 50 feet away.

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