It was a nice sunny Wednesday afternoon, and I was walking through a park downtown. The breeze was blowing, ducks were quacking, and up ahead a man was lying down on the path not moving. Some people walked on by without a second glance, some began to gather around, as did I, but all kept their distances. I heard some people say that he was sleeping, others that he was drunk. However, by simply moving around to see his face I clearly saw that he wasn’t sleeping. Blood stained his hair and a red streak was leaking from his open and glassy eye. We huddled around un-assuredly, and someone called 911.

This curious situation made me realize how much ignorance is caused by dependence. No one knew what to do. Other than the fall back automatic response of calling 911, we were all at a loss. Those pained few moments were like the ripping of a Band-Aid under which I saw the wound of the general public’s ignorance, and my own.

Our little group of first responders, if we can call ourselves that, simply stood there with distance between the victim and us as if from fear and looked on. The intentions were good, but none knew how to help. One woman who never got close to the victim and who did not even know he was bleeding made the diagnostic that he was breathing by apparently perceiving movement of a chest that was at least 5 feet away from her and lay under a few layers of clothing. I did not see such movement; I thought he was frighteningly still, yet no other nor I dared to check his pulse or breathing for fear of moving him or worsening the situation.

Then the paramedics arrived, and put an end to our uneasy shuffling. They quickly went to work with the actual know-how that I believe more of us should possess. A spectator sitting nearby said the man in question had looked drunk and had fallen off the bench around 35 minutes ago. I wasn’t sure if I had heard him right. 35 minutes? This man fell to the floor motionless, and this witness had done nothing but twiddle his thumbs while blood stained the cement next to him for 35 minutes?

But the real issue here was the sheer ignorance of all involved. The witness did not check on this man, the woman ascertained his vitals in a quite dubious manner, and none of the group knew what to do not to mention the countless who simply walked by. It is wired into us that as soon as we run into danger we can call emergency services to come to our hapless rescue. Any danger is shouldered off in the three-step process of pressing 9-1-1.  Fortunately for this man there was access to near instantaneous help for if not he would have been in trouble indeed. It made me wonder what we could do for ourselves should we ever face such a situation where we had to deal with pain on top of ignorance? We blindly place the outcome our life threatening situations and our survival in the hands of others knowing that they will run along to patch us up. Among other things, such easy help also means that folly is tolerable. People can get their friends to film them with cell phones as they attempt to jump from a brick wall onto a moving car knowing that if their superhero agility is amiss they don’t have to do or worry about anything except wait to be saved. In this regard the luxurious comfort of our modern society has overridden the basic survival instincts that have allowed us to get this far.

As I watched the paramedics work a duck stepped onto my shoe, and tried to eat my pants. This added a new dimension of wackiness to this day and alleviated the mood, and hopefully this article. As in my first commentary on social conditioning, I am not advocating for an abolishment of emergency services nor am I demonizing them. They are no doubt useful, but it is curious to realize how much they shield us and simultaneously pull the wool over our eyes. In this particular Wednesday’s light it is also easy to see just how thin this protective veil is and how easily things could go wrong in its absence especially with no kind of medical knowledge to replace it. However, it is better to realize this while being nibbled at by a duck than in any serious danger far from any help but your own. It is just food for thought, and hopefully it taste a little bit better than denim.