It’s two days before Christmas and I’m scouting on the edge of Skid Row, and there is a blind man standing on the corner and he is yelling.
The man is very tall and very gaunt and looks to be in his late 60s. He wears a blue track jacket and brown corduroys. Both are several sizes too large and perpetually seem in danger of falling off.
Some of the things he yells are nonsensical, and others are deeply offensive. Every fifth word is an obscenity.
The man’s voice is hoarse from yelling. There is a bewildered pain in his eyes. It is clear that the things he says are not by choice.
The sidewalk is busy with people walking to the nearby wholesale stores. Most give him a wide berth and ignore him, though I can see that he scares some people, and offends others.
Then, all of a sudden, the blind man steps off the curb and into traffic.
The light is green. Cars race across all four lanes. He shuffles forward, yelling and completely unaware of the danger ahead.
Then, out of nowhere, a man rides up beside him on a loud, gas-powered mini-bike. He cuts the engine.
“I got you, boss,” he says. He motions for the first and second lanes of cars to slow and stop. They do. He gets off his bike and walks it next to the man.
On the opposite side, a middle-aged man in a blue Dodgers jacket sees this. He steps into the road and holds up his hand with the force of a veteran traffic cop. The oncoming cars in the last two lanes immediately halt.
“Almost there,” he says to the blind man, who continues to yell.
A small crowd is now watching. As the blind man approaches the corner, an elderly woman steps forward and takes his hand.
“Come on, dear,” she says gently, and helps him up onto the curb. The blind man finds his footing on the corner. He is safe.
And then, just as quickly as they appeared, the elderly woman is gone, and the man on the motor bike is gone, and the man in the Dodgers hat is gone, and the throngs of pedestrians are walking by, and it’s as though nothing happened.
Like before, the man yells. And like before, the crowd gives him a wide berth.
But I realize now that they’re not truly ignoring him.
They may not want to hear what he is saying. But they seem to be paying a lot of attention to when he needs to cross the street.
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