And now for something completely different

I enjoy telling stories with pictures, but sometimes I just want to tell a story without. I have some writing in another blog that I will start including in this one once in a while when I did not take my camera along on my "adventures." Today's story is from several years ago in Manhattan. It is called

Wooooooooaahhhahhhhh

Waiting for the 8^th Avenue Express in Manhattan, we were standing around on the platform. E heard it first, a child crying in fear. It took us a minute to focus in. “Wooooooooaahhhahhhhh”, we heard. As we turned toward the sound we saw a tall black man dressed in homeless gear. His jacket was gray and dirty. It had a hood like a winter coat, but it was warm and spring-like outside. The man was hungry thin. His lower lip hung down like it had no connection to his face.

He was walking back and forth around some stairway railings. On the other side of the stairway we saw a crying child. He was very young, maybe six or seven. Tears streamed down his face. His Mom looked distraught, but his sister did not show any fear. “Wooooooaaahhhhh”, the black man said as he walked around the stair railings toward them. The mother gathered her children and edged around to be opposite him. As they edged one way, the black man reversed directions, heading them off. “Woooooaaahhhh”, he said again. The mother said nothing, just looked nervous and jumpy.

No one else in the crowd around the platform was afraid. It was clear the young black men enjoyed the scene, though. Some of them egged the man on. A few snickered. The rest of the crowd wondered, as we did, why the child was so frightened.

“Wooooaaaahhhhh”, the man said as he continued to pursue the family around the railings. The Mom was starting to show panic. She edged toward the exit, gathering her boy and girl. As the man followed them he kept up his ghost voice, “Whooooaaahhhhwhoooo”. The family accelerated up the ramp, running at top speed, and the man followed. Mom and the kids disappeared. All we could hear was “WHoooooaaaaahhhhh whooooahaahhhhhh” from the ramp, and then from the tunnel.

More laughter came to us as more young guys came down the ramp. The drama was over. The man came back down the ramp and walked along the platform. Some more snickers and giggles followed, but most of the people were silent, sad. The fear was understandable, in a way. It was New York, after all. The sad parts were seeing the normality of living in fear, the inability of the woman to see that others were not scared, the panic in the face of difference!

It was New York. You could always expect to see someone crazy, maybe dangerous, certainly out of the normal, wherever you came from. But the question remained, was this a black/white thing? Or was it just an overprotective mom taking her children to safety. Flight is natural, in the face of a danger you can’t hope to survive. People should always hope to survive, even if there is no absolute safety.

But flight in the face of difference?