Just Talk to Folks, or Lessons From the Field

 The day of that field trip was cold enough to freeze tears and as damp as a wet dog’s nose. Their teacher has told these 75 high school juniors they will spend it in the gritty city’s center.

He has asked me and three additional adults along to create five small groups of 15 kids each, all here as part of their unit on “Scripting the Other,” which meant trying to better understand the experience of people they do not normally see, or if they do see, do not necessarily pause to speak to or even glance at. In a respectful, non-invasive way, their task was to fan out, then watch and, where possible, interact with these individuals; in other words to do what their moms taught them never to do: namely stare, if discreetly, and talk to strangers.

It was an exercise not only in observation and empathy, but in subjectivity too, since, as we all slowly learn in this life, much of what we see in the world is a reflection of who we are.  It was a difficult assignment and many of the kids in my group were uncertain - nervous even. “We don’t know what to write,” several told me in the trip’s third hour. “We don’t know how to do this.”

“Sure you do,“ I said. “You’re born knowing how to do this.  Just forget yourself. And smile. The rest will follow.” 

So back they all waded again, into the great democratic tide, to look and be looked at, to address and be addressed, to feel themselves a part of this rich common life - all but three girls, walking close behind me.

Just ahead of us on the sidewalk sat a badly-twisted man in a wheelchair, the panhandler’s traditional coffee-can clutched in one bare and wind-stung hand.

“This is too hard for them,” I thought. But suddenly, the girl most recently fretting over her shyness veered to stand before him.

“How’s it goin’?” she called cheerfully. “Can we bring you some coffee? We’re just going to get some.”

I cannot here reproduce the speech of this man, who had a disorder that not only corkscrewed his body and sent his head arching backward, but prevented him from closing his lips for consonants, thus making of every word a long and groan-like utterance.

 In the next 20 minutes he said several things in this tortured way, among them, “If you would be so kind”; “Cream and sugar”; and, after an effort at speech so great as to cause facial spasms, this warning sentence: “I will require assistance.” Of course!  we realized, looking down. He lacked the use of his hands. We told him we’d be back and set out to find the coffee.

“This is hard!” one girl said as we hurried along.

 It was hard indeed, and on many levels: hard to see affliction this grievous; hard to cross that invisible moat one normally keeps around one; hard, once one has crossed it into seeing, to cross back into not-seeing, into rushing past with eyes averted.

When we returned, each concentrated on a different aspect of the task. One held the hot coffee to the gentleman’s lips, one concentrated on “translating” his words, and one approached tentatively with the doughnut he had finally admitted he would also enjoy. This third one holding the doughnut stepped close, then hesitated.

“How do I...? What should I...? I don’t know how to do this.” 

Again the man’s groan-like sounds. Again our struggle to sort sound into meaning. 

At last we understood. “It’s not a complicated process,” he was saying. In other words, “Bring the food to my lips.” In other words, “Feed me.”

Thus did at least four people out on a field trip begin learning how to cross that moat. All it took was focusing less on ourselves than on the other fellow.

And the gentleman was right: It wasn’t complicated at all.