posted by wtanaka at
6/14/2003 10:05:00 AM
Yesterday I was walking from
the office to the Downtown Berkeley BART station, the entrance of which is an escalator descending underground covered by a steel-grey circular metal... tent.
A blind man thirty feet in front of me, walking stick extended, was also heading toward the station. A nearby girl stopped her conversation with a guy friend of hers to take the man by the arm and help him find the escalator.
I rode on the escalator behind him. "He seems like he's been to this station before," I thought. Sure enough, when he gets off the escalator, he masterfully curves left over the dirty blue "welcome" carpet toward the turnstiles. He clearly was doing just fine, so I didn't feel any need to help him.
I glanced down for a moment, and when I looked back up, I saw the most amazing thing. Another man had, coming from the blind man's front side, run headlong into the blind man. With sheer amazement, I watched the other man, continuing to look down at his feet, continue at an even faster pace away from the blind man, toward the base of the escalators behind me. The blind man turned his head to face the direction that the other man had walked and stood there, eyes staring into the empty space, for six or seven seconds.
I watched his face.
He turned and continued walking, but probably had lost his orientation, and was headed on a collision course at the two BART workers leaning on the railing next to the turnstiles. The one that he was going to hit slowly backed up, directly away from the blind man. It was clear that sime kind of collision was imminent.
I took the blind man by the arm and helped him toward the turnstiles. It turned out that none of his tickets had enough money (how would he know?) so after we let one guy waiting behind us through the gate, I helped the blind man to the agent counter. He thanked me, and I went back to hop on the train.
