Old Man & Me
So I’m walking back from lunch the other day when out of the corner of my eye I see what looks like an old man running down a hill, slipping, and falling. I turn my head but only see a tree. Taking another step further sure enough there was an old man laying in a puddle of mud. Rushing over I offer my assistance. I have to repeat things a couple of times before getting a response.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“Only my pride” he eventually replies.
“Well don’t feel too bad,” I say “I’ve taken a few falls in my day”
I try to help him up but despite a firm grip on my hand he goes completely limp. I’m trying to help him but he’s making me do all the work. Worse than that actually as going limp is the first thing they teach you at protest / civil disobedience school - it makes it much harder for the police to move you.
After my first failed attempt I try to get a hold of Occupational Health & Safety but of course I don’t have their numbers on me so I have to navigate voicemail hell to get the receptionist to connect me. Sure enough neither person I’m trying to reach is there.
The old man pipes up “I need to go to the washroom soon”
Great.
“Okay, I’m going to try and help you up again but you gotta help me a little this time“. He agrees. We get him about a quarter of the way up, making good progress, and he suddenly gives up, goes limp again, and fights me to ease himself back into the puddle of mud.
“I’m over 200 pounds,” he says “you don’t have the leverage to pick me up by yourself”
“That’s why you need to work with me,” I said “we need to do it together”
“I recently had surgery,” he reveals, “so I’m pretty weak”
“But nothing hurts?” I ask again.
“No, but I’m a little uncomfortable,” he says, “I landed on my cane”
I roll him over to get his cane out from under him and he unceremoniously snatches it out of my hand.
I call switchboard back and try the direct approach, “can I get first aid assistance” and I give her my location. She’s new so she doesn’t know where I am so I have her write it down and tell her to repeat it verbatim to first aid.
Hanging up I turn back to the old man to discover him trying to get up on his own. I walk over and say “if you’re not going to wait for first aid at least let me help you. Now you need to put the same effort into it as if I weren’t helping you and you have to let me know if anything begins to hurt“. He agrees so I dig my heels in to the mud, and pull with everything I’ve got. We get him three-quarters of the way up and he suddenly lets go and eases himself all the way into the mud again.
Now almost as muddy as he I give up and just keep an eye out for first aid. As we’re waiting he says “they don’t give an <expletive deleted> about me“.
“Hey, I didn’t have to help you, you know. I could’ve just pretended I didn’t see you and kept walking. I’d be back at my office, warm, dry, and not covered in mud right now. You don’t know how far away first aid was when they got my message or if they were already responding to a call,” I said curtly “so I’d stop bad-mouthing the only people bothering to help you, particularly the ones trained to deal with stuff like this that you haven’t even met yet. Now why don’t you save some time and answer some questions first aid will want to know when they get here”
He had enough time to tell me he was 77 and what city he lives in before 2 first aid teams arrived.
Rather than have both teams end up as muddy as I was I stayed long enough to help them get him to a bench. Then I went back to my trailer and spent over an hour cleaning up.
I felt good about helping him, ineffectual as I was by myself, but telling a 77 year old man wallowing in a puddle of mud to mind his manners was definitely the oddest moment of the week for me.
“Well an old man said to me, in a voice filled with pain, where you goin’ young man…“
