Some moments are seared into your brain and reside in your memory just below your everyday thoughts, easily accessible. Why certain memories get laid down and why they last and lurk is a mystery to me. Most of mine are memories where I was a victim of injustice or I inadvertently behaved as a jerk. It’s no small discomfort to have such negative thoughts at my fingertips, but luckily my nature is not to dwell on such things. Today, however, I replayed one such memory on my interior television-of-Rideout-memories and had a bit of a new insight.
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The year is 1986, my buddy Erec and I are spending a day in Brussels on our way from Alabama to Corsica. Maybe we had a daytime’s worth of layover or maybe we were catching a train for the next leg of the trip – it is a bit troubling to me that I don’t recall those details. What I do remember is every second of a brief encounter with a band of Romani (we would have called them gypsies back then) kids on our way out of the airport.
Erec was walking ahead of me as I noticed a group of small children approaching us aggressively. Even I could see Erec’s big wallet almost sticking out of the pockets of his shorts. Like a magnet, it called to these children and, as a couple of them distracted him by lightly pushing a piece of cardboard into his chest and begging, a different kid quickly lifted his wallet. Eric felt it but, by the time he turned around, the kid had melted back into the crowd of his peers. In retrospect, I don’t think the kids thought he and I were travelling together. Luckily, I saw the entire operation and pointed out the kid that had his wallet. Why they didn’t just run at that moment, I’ll never know. Instead they threw the wallet from one kid to the next. The thing is, between the two of us, we could easily step up to whichever kid happened to have the wallet. At this point, I remember feeling a bit angry. The kids were getting nervous the longer it lasted and one of them threw the wallet to a little old grandma who was probably in charge. She was just as short as the kids and I hadn’t even noticed her until then. Without thinking, I took two big steps to close the distance to her and I grabbed her wrist, hard.
As I stared down at her, face to face, and squeezed tightly, I realized how tiny and frail she was. Her eyes widen slightly in fear and she simply, silently dropped the wallet to the ground. In that moment, I felt a profound reversal in which I went from victim to aggressor. I imagined her lack of status with law enforcement contrasting with my own favored status as an American tourist. Being so close to this stranger and sensing the profound life experience chasm between us; the moment was so surreal, I felt right then that I would remember this exact moment for the rest of my life.
We scooped up the wallet and went on into town for some sightseeing.
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| Manneken Pis - I remember 'discovering' this Brussels classic later that day |
Usually, I think about this encounter as having poignancy for me because of that moment of reversal. Occasionally I have explored some weird kind of associated guilt: Was that wallet worth the threat of violence that was implicit in my own actions?
Today, however, I peeled back another onion layer of my messy subconscious and am worrying about another interpretation. Was there some dark part of me that felt empowered and righteous in that moment with its hint of violence?
This, in turn, reminds me of a moment in New York City when a friend and I were discussing the fear associated with standing too close to the edge of a subway platform. “Why do we all have that irrational fear of getting pushed into the tracks by some stranger? It’s not gonna happen!” she said. When I responded with, “We have such a fear because we ourselves harbor thoughts of pushing others into the track”, her eyes widen slightly in surprise. Surprise at me or surprise at herself?
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