Welcome to NYC

[packsherbags]

It was beautiful outside today: the kind of weather that makes you wish you were a street vendor just so you could stay out and breathe in the crisp air all day long. But not everybody should have been outside today, it seems. This morning, approximately half an hour before I reached the office, a man fell to his death from the top of my building

Comments

[packsherbags]

Maybe it's easy because I'm still new to it all.

[evrything_but]

Well, that's certainly incredibly creepy. I hope that these coworkers are atypical.

[packsherbags]

Maybe it really does get harder to be amazed over time. For example, I'm a lot less impressed by/cognizant of the subway than I used to be, despite taking it in Philly several days a week. All the same, I don't think it excuses their morbid amusement with the photographs of the guy falling to his death.

[intrepia]

That nonchalance is pretty alarming... geographic origin isn't a reason for not caring.

[packsherbags]

I think her argument was more along the lines of desensitization.

[runawaybunny]

The only thing I can compare this to is the morbid sense of humor that emergency services people have. Just as if you were working with it, maybe living in a place where tragedies happen all the time makes you joke about it just in order not to be overwhelmed by the senselessness of it all. I wonder if residents of Northeast Philly are the same when they hear about another shooting. I was recently talking to Kat C. about the anonymity of NYC - how the crowd of people in such a small area is so huge, you eventually stop caring about the person next to you. I'm not saying it's excusable to be so blase about someone dying, but it might be an explination. Hope your day was better today!

[packsherbags]

The day wasn't so bad overall, but I found myself shaken in a way: I didn't even hear it had happened until I got in the elevator at lunchtime!

[weeblemite]

New Yorkers do get desensitized, but not, in my experience, like your friend. Philly or NYC, there's some crazy stuff on the news every night and normally you sigh if you see it and say, "that's a shame," and move on. I'd say it's more a defense mechanism than anything else. If you paid attention to all the stuff you'd be too afraid to move. But ppl are NOT, however, desensitized to things that happen in their area, right in front of them, or to anyone they remotely know. I was damn interested, for my own safety, when a woman involved with some drug stuff got killed 3 blocks from me. My whole neighborhood was hit when a plane went down. Having no ill reaction to someone dying like that is unusual and possibly offensive. Welcome to NYC means you're going to see more of this stuff, not that you shouldn't care.

[packsherbags]

Nicely said. =)

[weeblemite]

Gracias =)