A chance meeting in a car park leads to a question of sanity, and just how bad it may be.
"You Must Be Mad!"
It's a sad day when a stranger starts showing signs of fear because one is willing to help them.
Dateline: 11:45, Sunday, July 8th, 2001 - a car-park in South Central Bristol.
I'm in Bristol to attend a science fiction convention, but at this very moment I'm preparing to take a couple of hours out to meet friends for lunch. As I fiddle around the boot of my car, arranging, and re-arranging the luggage in its miniscule boot, a man approaches me from the street. He is in a state of clear agitation, and in his eyes there's a chaotic mixture of confusion, desperation and panic. Clutched in his arms is a small personal document folder, and a higgledy-piggledy sheaf of assorted papers.
He plays his opening gambit, running off at the mouth just as fast as his words can carry him: "You're probably going to tell me to go away. You probably think I'm mad, or drunk or something." Well yes, if I'm honest, my guard did go up, and similar thoughts did find themselves jostling for prominence in my forebrain. But he's smaller than me, and there are a selection of heavy objects in the boot of the car, so I'm not overly concerned, in the unlikely event there is a threat at hand. But I like to think I'm a better judge of character than that, and this fellow clearly isn't dangerous. Upset, yes. Distressed, certainly. But dangerous? I don't think so. Besides, he's too busy to be dangerous, fumbling with his papers as a man possessed, attempting to herd with two hands what rightly requires 3 or 4.
"I wonder if you can help me", he continues. (Oh yes?) He's not even looking at me, still hunting fervently through the papers. "I was wondering if you could lend me a couple of pounds. I live in Clifton. I've come out because my wife is ill, but I've run out of petrol and I haven't a pound in my pocket." He gestures, as best he can without scattering his cradled possessions left right and centre, to a small metallic green hatchback, standing a hundred yards away is with its tailgate open and hazard lights flashing. For the life of me I can't help smirking at the comedy of the situation, but thankfully it goes unnoticed. After all it's clearly not funny to the fellow himself.
Suddenly the nervous stranger finds what he's looking for, his hand striking like an enraged rattlesnake. He looks up, an open passport in his hand. "I'll leave something with you. I'll take your address. I'll pay you back. I promise. Please. Look I'll even leave this if I have to." (Yes, it WAS his passport. A casual glance had already established that.)
So far this encounter has been altogether one-sided. It has lasted about 20 seconds and I have been little more than an amused spectator. This is clearly my cue to become a participant. Knowing I have a note in my trouser pocket, of sufficient value to buy something approaching a gallon of petrol, I reach in extract it and hold it out. (It turns out that the value is 10 pounds not 5, but who's counting? It was worth it for the pleasure of watching the combined look of astonishment and relief wash over the man's face.)
I can see him visibly relaxing. "I thought this was going to be difficult", he says, earnestly. Placing his papers on the ground (clearly rational thought is re-establishing its previously conceded territory), he starts rifling through them again. "Let me take your address." This time he's looking for something to write on.
This is my second cue, though only my first opportunity to utter a word. "No."
Momentary pause. Even greater astonishment. It may have been my cue, but my counterpart obviously thought I'd fluffed my line. It's not at all the answer he was expecting. "Bu-bu... But how am I going to pay you back? You must give me your address. I must pay you back!"
"Don't worry about it", I reply. "Go. Do what you have to. Do the same for someone else some day."
Now he's almost as upset as he was when this whole thing started. This doesn't fit with his cosily insulated world view. "But? Please?"
"I leave it up to your conscience. You can pay me back by helping SOMEONE ELSE. That promise is payment enough." What I'm actually thinking, though it has not quite crystallised into clear thought, is something along the lines "Oh no. You don't get off that lightly." Desperation had driven him to venture outside his enclosed little box of a life, and I wasn't going to let him pay his passage back behind closed doors quite so easily. Too many people scurry through life barely conscious of the souls whose paths they cross every day, and I fully wanted him to give some food for thought. I wanted him to realise that the specks he normally pays little more than passing attention to are also people.
"You must be mad", he says. "Maybe", I replied quietly, mainly to myself. It's certainly not the first time in my life that the suggestion has been made over the years, but I'm not going to comment further.
At this point it's fair to assume that we both expect the encounter to be concluded. But that isn't to be the case, and I will eventually lose count of the number of times this unsettled little man is to repeat his assertion in the ensuing few minutes. For the moment, confused and nervous, but also relieved at the alleviation of his immediate problem, he hurriedly retrieves his little pile, and rushes back to his car.
I return to re-packing my luggage, happier than I've been all weekend. I came to Bristol for a convention, but this little incident has over-shadowed the whole thing. One of those rare conjunctions of being in the right place at just the right time. (Not that I'm a fatalist - don't get me wrong. I don't for one moment believe that I was there by some greater design, because in that case I should be somewhere where there are far greater needs to attend to. No, it was just happy chance.) Having finished what I'm doing, I close the boot of the car, and look up for a moment to see the stranger locking his car and jog-trotting off to the nearest petrol station a few hundred yards away.
I sit in the car, and fidget for a few minutes with keys, music, and a couple of gadgets, and I'm just about to start the car and leave when a face appears at the open driver's window.
The man's back. "It's closed", he blurts out, no less distressed now than he ever was. Three steps forward, two steps back... I'm not sure how I'm supposed to help any further. I'm not local, and I don't know of any other petrol stations within walking distance. But I pride myself on having a talent for logic and a keen ability for problem-solving most of the time. I start thinking my way through figuring out various means of getting the necessary information, whilst at the same time uttering soothing aphorisms trying to calm him down a little.
I'm about to 'phone the RAC when, as luck would have it, a man appears along the path, wheeling a bicycle. I point him out. I've barely finished speaking, before the new stranger is faced with a picture of hysteria whilst trying to understand the excited stumbling queries of the other. He replies, and I overhear the bulk of the conversation. It's not going well, so I beckon him over to the car, explain the situation briefly to him. He ponders for a moment, then explains that he too is not wholly familiar with the area, but that he thinks there's a garage, "somewhere over there", pointing across the main road behind a copse of trees in the middle of a large roundabout. I thank the cyclist who then continues on his way.
We can't see past the trees. There certainly are no clear signs of any petrol station an easy walk away, so I offer a lift. It's obviously the quickest, and most sensible means of exploration. He jumps away. "No. No I can't do that. You've already helped too much. You must have somewhere to go."
"Look:", I say with all the gentle persuasion I can muster, "You're in trouble. I can help. And whilst I'm already late for a lunch date, this little errand is barely out of my way, and a couple of minutes more is not going to make any significant difference either way. Don't argue. Please."
Reluctantly, but clearly realising it is his best option (logic and self-interest make powerful allies), he opens the door, pausing as I casually sweep my loose papers off the seat into the passenger footwell. He clambers into the low seat, strapping into the seatbelt with all the classic signs of near terror. With shaking hands and almost white knuckles he battles clumsily with the clasp. "You're mad", he repeats once more.
I start the car, make my way out of the car park, and head off to the opposite side of the roundabout that we've been directed around.
There's no evidence of the garage we've been directed to, so I make my way into the nearby supermarket carpark, on the off-chance of there being an on-site petrol station there.
He's mumbling quietly to himself again. "Mad. Must be mad." (I think that either his mind is so far off the beaten track now that he's lost his direction, or he genuinely thinks I can't hear him. Still, I just find it funny.)
"See what you can find", I tell him, "I'll give you a lift back.", and pull up at the kerb to let him out.
"No, no. It's alright. I'll manage. Really." This time it's his turn to be insistent. Clearly uncomfortable that his dilemma has forced him to compromise and ally himself, if only temporarily, with the loon sitting next to him. The tether to his world view has reached maximum stretch, the stress tears are appearing and it's about to snap. He leaves no doubt that he will accept no further help, not even in the form of a return ride to his car that takes me mere seconds out of my way.
"You're mad. I tell you you're mad", he repeats for the very last time, as he leaps out of the car, as if persuaded with the business end of a cattle prod. From the way he slams the car door you would think that the very hounds of Hell were barely restrained behind it. Scurrying away into the milling crowd of pedestrian shoppers - clearly afraid of the weirdo he has left behind the steering wheel - the man vanishes forever into the throng.
And no. This isn't fiction. This is absolute truth, and I will never forget this particular 10 minutes of my life. Strange, isn't it? I'll never see the man again. I'll never know if he kept his end of the bargain. And I don't really care. The price was for his benefit, not mine. My reward came simply from helping him.
Now.
Answer me, and answer me truly (particularly in the unlikely event
that you happen to be that man from Clifton): Am I mad?
If it's mad to believe in the value of humanity...
If it's mad to believe that we each have a duty to not only take what this
world provides, but to hand some of it back when someone truly needs it, or mad
not to fear those who will...
If it's mad to
want to make a stranger's day that little bit better, in the hope that
should the unthinkable happen and that one day I am that stranger someone
will be there for me, and because them's the things that make living
worthwhile...
If any of those are indicators of insanity, then, Your Honour,
I plead guilty as charged.
I'm as looney as a March Hare in a wind-tunnel.
What's more, I'm stoutly proud of it.
But if I am mad, and we now live in times where a willingness to help a stranger in
need is proof of insanity, then today is a very, VERY sad day...
