Morally Bankrupt?!

Remember, I volunteer at 211 on Mondays? I do this not because I'm a nice guy full of unresolved altruistic needs but really I love to have a reason to get up and get dressed and get out the door on Monday morning. This true, I am finding that I don't have something to do are go to I just don't do anything during the day. Mondays bring me back some form of routine. I'm shocked at how much routine I need this in my life. So yesterday it's Monday morning I'm up and I'm out the door. A storm front moved in during the night in the dark morning was overcast but as of yet no rain. So I get to the bus stop and headed directly into Starbucks for my weekly latte.

This morning is kind of quiet at the coffeehouse. I visit with the baristas, I get my latte to kill little time sense the inbound 201 had passed just minutes before across the street so I knew I had another 25 minutes to kill before the next bus rolled up. I rolled over to my table next to the window and fiddled with my tablet, checking Facebook, twitter and e-mail accounts. I lingered at my table by the window for about 15 minutes then headed out to the bus stop. Despite the overcast morning the temperature was agreeable as I waited for the bus. I was mindlessly facing South, looking down State Street peering for my bus when I heard the crunch. I heard a light crunch found two malicious, like a warning, I turned to the direction of the sound and saw a late model vehicle backing away from another late-model vehicle parked against the wall of a small printing and office supply shop. The vehicle was the only vehicle in the lot clearly the vehicle belonged to one of the patrons of Starbucks and had parked, purposely all the way across the shared parking lot so it would be free of any damage risk. So it is pretty ironic that this other late model vehicle back all the way from the front of Starbucks arced directly into the parked vehicle. I took all this in an instant. The vehicle backing up was not going very fast, thank goodness, and actually just The bumper but a loud enough tap that it gained my attention.

I just watched and wondered if the driver was going to get out of the vehicle and go around and look to see if any damage had been done. I sat there and remembered times that I had “ tapped” and I had to adjudicate whether I would turn the car off get the wheelchair out of the backseat transfer and and inspect for damage. I hated doing this. The driver did leave the vehicle, there is a long pause and I can sense them making the decision of to check for damage but they did not. They quietly turned and left the back of the parking. I was intrigued and I knew I had the time. The bus was not due for another seven minutes. I rolled over to the car and looked for damage. Luckily I couldn't see anything amiss. I did see some scuffing the bumper which I'm sure was the contact point of the two vehicles but really no damage I could see. However, I did take an image of the vehicle just for the fun of it.

I immediately began to ruminate over my action or lack of action. Was I supposed to come forward as a witness to this event? Should I have gone into Starbucks and try to find the owner of the vehicle and let them know what I had seen? Should I have told someone am I a total slacker because I shirked my civic responsibility? Is there an unwritten social contract of reporting accidents when the occur in your immediate vicinity? So many questions that I don't have the answer for. Clearly I flunked my good citizen test yesterday morning, waiting for the bus in the sun to rise.