This Pandemic made me an Asshole

A few months ago I drove past a man waving for help at a freeway entrance. It looked like his car had broken down. I have every sort of tool imaginable in my truck for this exact sort of situation, yet I drove past. So did everyone else.

I walked into a Trader Joe’s in Seattle the other day. A man outside was just asking for food, not money that could be spent elsewhere. I pretended to be on my phone as I walked past him. On my way out, a lady nicer than me offered to be the better person.

Just before I moved, I was driving through the back roads of Martinez when a Prius driving on the opposite side waves me down. I cruise up to it and roll down my window to an elderly gentleman with a shaky voice.  He was trying to get to Berkeley, a city at least 45 minutes away and in the complete opposite direction that he was heading. I gave him directions, he wasn’t understanding, and then asked me if he could follow me to the freeway. I became nervous, and made an excuse about being needing to be somewhere and drove away.

Looking back on these events, I had no reason not to help. I had nowhere to be, I had all the tools and knowledge needed to help, and in the last case, the freeway was actually on my way home.

But I was afraid. So I didn’t help.

I like to think that I am a nice guy most of the time. I donate. I help my friends move. I’ve volunteered in a soup kitchen or two (but not more than that). But after spending so much time inside during a time where everyone could be a potential carrier of a deadly virus, I’m wary. Irrationally so in most situations I’ll admit, but still wary. 

Maybe I would have been just as wary without the pandemic. The world was still a dangerous place before Covid, but I like to think that I would have been more helpful. Maybe not. Maybe this is just my convenient excuse.

Even so, the last few years of the pandemic definitely have changed people. There is no going back to “normal.” Not after we’ve spent so much time isolated, working, and studying from the same room we sleep in. We all have gotten a lot better at being alone.

But that shouldn’t be the reason we stop helping people, and it shouldn’t be my excuse.