Hindsight 50-50 (quite possibly "tl; dr")
I only knew what I should have done the night after it happened. Even with at least two people there who had taken an introductory course in psychology, none of us thought about it. In hindsight it's so obvious; we should have asked her help.
We were driving to a party last Saturday. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong: the people I was going with had had a fight on the way to where they'd pick me up, there had been a traffic jam, the girl who drove had had the car for only about a week or two and had found out on Friday that the fifth gear wasn't working (the car is old enough to drive its own moped, 16 years). The doors wouldn't close or open easily, and while we were driving to the location of the party, the Tomtom navigation system started displaying a battery-low warning while it was plugged in. Apparently the cigarette lighter it was plugged into wasn't working either.
The navigation system gave up right before we entered the village where the party was to be held, which sucked royally because the last part of a travel like this is usually the hardest. Thankfully we found a map by the road which led us quite easily to our target, but then we had to drive circles to find a parking spot.
The first time she tried to park the car, it went very awkwardly. The car apparently handles very badly, because what looked like an easy backward turn was too much to ask from the old tin can. It could squeeze into the spot, but much too far to the passenger side. Instead of going all the way out and trying again, she kept trying to get it better by going back and forth to her position, only going closer and closer to the passenger side until she only barely missed the car next to us with her mirror.
We went and found a different parking spot. She did pretty good, just kept wiggling to get it perfect. It's hard parking on someone else's instructions, I know this, and her boyfriend kept trying to help out but sounded impatient to frustrated ears, which only frustrated her more.
We had drawn an audience from the people in front of whose house we parked. They were concerned for their car, I guess; they kept staring out the window. Finally the car was parked, neatly as it should, no damage done. My friend got out of the car, tired, frustrated and not feeling well. Her boyfriend helped her sit down on the sidewalk, on the ledge of a raised flower bed, probably planted by the municipality. They weren't in a garden.
The woman who had watched us through the window came out. "What do you think you're doing, you're crushing the flowers!" she yelled, "they've only just been planted, what kind of person does something rude like that?"
My friend and her boyfriend both reacted angrily. "Oh, shut up, she's not sitting on the flowers, just the ledge!"
The woman got even angrier and started snapping about how we'd better not damage their car, and how anti-social we were. They got angry in return, I was speechless. To be honest, I thought the woman had come out to offer the girl who had just more or less collapsed at her front door a glass of water, to offer to call a doctor, something like that. I couldn't imagine how anyone could be so selfish as to value a couple of cheap geraniums that were probably not even hers over the obvious fatigue and discomfort of a fellow human being. I am naive like that.
In hindsight, I should have asked her for a glass of water. "My friend is tired and feels ill, do you have a bit of water for us?" Few human beings will deny an earnest request for help, being needed will flatter most people, and if you can get someone to do you a small favour they're more likely to start feeling sympathy for you even if before they didn't.
Instead, I griped to my friends on how we should have asked her if she would have asked my friend to go faint somewhere else if there had been a real emergency, or how she felt the first couple of times when she had to park a car, or how she would like to be treated if she ever felt weary in a strange city. Maybe I should have asked, it wouldn't have been effective right away, but it might have gotten her to think about it later.
But I did neither. I was dumbstruck and frozen to the spot. And when she asked me one last time, starting to doubt herself maybe, "Isn't that rude then, sitting on someone else's plants?" all I said was: "She was just tired from driving, how CAN you value a couple of plants over a human suffering?"
But I don't think it registered at all. And I felt like I had failed at keeping the harmony in the world. But next time, I'll remember.
We were driving to a party last Saturday. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong: the people I was going with had had a fight on the way to where they'd pick me up, there had been a traffic jam, the girl who drove had had the car for only about a week or two and had found out on Friday that the fifth gear wasn't working (the car is old enough to drive its own moped, 16 years). The doors wouldn't close or open easily, and while we were driving to the location of the party, the Tomtom navigation system started displaying a battery-low warning while it was plugged in. Apparently the cigarette lighter it was plugged into wasn't working either.
The navigation system gave up right before we entered the village where the party was to be held, which sucked royally because the last part of a travel like this is usually the hardest. Thankfully we found a map by the road which led us quite easily to our target, but then we had to drive circles to find a parking spot.
The first time she tried to park the car, it went very awkwardly. The car apparently handles very badly, because what looked like an easy backward turn was too much to ask from the old tin can. It could squeeze into the spot, but much too far to the passenger side. Instead of going all the way out and trying again, she kept trying to get it better by going back and forth to her position, only going closer and closer to the passenger side until she only barely missed the car next to us with her mirror.
We went and found a different parking spot. She did pretty good, just kept wiggling to get it perfect. It's hard parking on someone else's instructions, I know this, and her boyfriend kept trying to help out but sounded impatient to frustrated ears, which only frustrated her more.
We had drawn an audience from the people in front of whose house we parked. They were concerned for their car, I guess; they kept staring out the window. Finally the car was parked, neatly as it should, no damage done. My friend got out of the car, tired, frustrated and not feeling well. Her boyfriend helped her sit down on the sidewalk, on the ledge of a raised flower bed, probably planted by the municipality. They weren't in a garden.
The woman who had watched us through the window came out. "What do you think you're doing, you're crushing the flowers!" she yelled, "they've only just been planted, what kind of person does something rude like that?"
My friend and her boyfriend both reacted angrily. "Oh, shut up, she's not sitting on the flowers, just the ledge!"
The woman got even angrier and started snapping about how we'd better not damage their car, and how anti-social we were. They got angry in return, I was speechless. To be honest, I thought the woman had come out to offer the girl who had just more or less collapsed at her front door a glass of water, to offer to call a doctor, something like that. I couldn't imagine how anyone could be so selfish as to value a couple of cheap geraniums that were probably not even hers over the obvious fatigue and discomfort of a fellow human being. I am naive like that.
In hindsight, I should have asked her for a glass of water. "My friend is tired and feels ill, do you have a bit of water for us?" Few human beings will deny an earnest request for help, being needed will flatter most people, and if you can get someone to do you a small favour they're more likely to start feeling sympathy for you even if before they didn't.
Instead, I griped to my friends on how we should have asked her if she would have asked my friend to go faint somewhere else if there had been a real emergency, or how she felt the first couple of times when she had to park a car, or how she would like to be treated if she ever felt weary in a strange city. Maybe I should have asked, it wouldn't have been effective right away, but it might have gotten her to think about it later.
But I did neither. I was dumbstruck and frozen to the spot. And when she asked me one last time, starting to doubt herself maybe, "Isn't that rude then, sitting on someone else's plants?" all I said was: "She was just tired from driving, how CAN you value a couple of plants over a human suffering?"
But I don't think it registered at all. And I felt like I had failed at keeping the harmony in the world. But next time, I'll remember.