The other night, en route home from work, I decided to stop at a diner to pick up dinner. It’s a popular diner on heavily trafficked Route 1, a familiar place where I’ve eaten a number of times. The sun had set, so it was dark, and the cold and wind were biting. Small white Christmas lights still twinkled on the garlands draped around the restaurant’s doors, and I couldn’t wait to hurl myself through those doors, out of the cold. As my hand fell upon the door handle, something made me turn my head to the right.
There on the stone bench just outside the diner sat a handbag, unattended. It was a black fabric shoulder bag of a unisex style, open wide enough for me to see the bottle of soda sticking out of it as well as a hastily folded newspaper. My first instinct was to look back into the parking lot, so I did. There were no patrons behind any wheels and no deserted cars with their motors running. There was no one at all: just the abandoned purse, the whoosh of oblivious traffic, and a gnawing sense of dread growing in my heart.
This was Jersey, the most heavily populated State in the Union, not a quiet little hamlet where everyone knows each other. No one in his or her right mind would leave a bag unattended and open in a public area.
My next instinct was to reach for the purse. I’d thought to bring it into the diner to ask the hostess to go through it, find the owner’s ID, and alert him or her to the fact that his/her property was safe. But even as I reached out, I snatched my hand back as if the thing had suddenly burst into flames.
I rushed into the diner and panted at the two hostesses behind the register that there was a suspicious abandoned handbag right outside their door. The youngest woman inquired whether or not it was woman’s handbag. I shot back, “I didn’t ask it. Look, you’d better call the cops and do it NOW. Nobody leaves a handbag unattended!” The older woman asked if it was really necessary to alert the police. This, after the media had been flooded Christmas Week with reports of how two suicide bombers were foiled in their attempts to blow up U.S. planes — on U.S. soil!
Since I’m not known to be shy, my voice had carried into the restaurant. An off-duty cop who’d been eating dinner jumped to his feet, not bothering to toss on his coat. “Where is it?” he cried, and I pointed him to the spot.
A minute later, the cop popped back in, announcing that everything was fine. Behind him was a laughing foreigner, a man amused by my jumping to conclusions. In a thick accent, he explained that he was the diner’s regular supplier of air fresheners, and that the bag held his samples. I wasn’t laughing. I told him he couldn’t leave bags or packages unattended, post 9/11, and that he was lucky he wasn’t arrested.
Later, as I related this story, my husband asked me if I were looking for that proverbial hole to China, in which to drop. He’d assumed that I’d mortified myself by crying, “Wolf!” I wasn’t mortified in the least. I’d rather be proven wrong about something like this — my God, I’d much rather be proven wrong! — than right.
The moral of this tale may be self-evident, but the two hostess’ responses say otherwise, and they are not alone. Many years ago, there was an incident that occurred in Queens, New York. Kitty Genovese, a young, decent woman, was stabbed to death one night, mere yards from her front door, as many of her neighbors looked on. In the courtyard of the apartment building where Kitty had lived, she fought her murderer; it took the bastard a while to snuff the life out of her. As she struggled, she screamed at the top of her lungs for help. Windows flung open above the courtyard and heads popped out. As the police later informed the media, there were many witnesses to Kitty’s murder. Not one person grabbed a knife or a baseball bat to run down to save her. No one called the police. Kitty not only died violently, she died needlessly, with her immobile neighbors, in effect, accessories to her murder.
In the wake of this much-publicized event that shocked the city and forever burned Kitty Genovese’s name into our brains, psychologists came forth to explain how such a terrible thing could have occurred. They cited a well-documented pattern of human behavior to illustrate what happens in cases like these, in which people perceive a viable threat. Each person thinks that the other person will take care of the situation. The other person thinks that the next person will take action, and so on. In the end, no one does a damned thing.
Wake up, people! This is post 9/11. Keep your ears and eyes open and for God’s sake, if you see or hear something that is the slightest bit suspicious, alert the authorities ASAP. And if you don’t believe in God, do it for yourself and everyone around you. You don’t have to be in an airport. Nothing is safe from or sacred to terrorists. Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed the hell out of England’s schools, churches, libraries, street kiosks, and other public places in an effort to catch the Brits off guard and break their spirit. Hitler failed miserably in that last endeavor. Let’s be sure the bloody terrorists fail in theirs.
Don’t take for granted that our security forces can do it all. Help them do their jobs. Help us keep our country safe.
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