Des Moines Motorist Freezes to Death on University Ave
That could have been Saturday’s headline in the Des Moines Register. Thankfully, it wasn’t… but, my experience on Friday afternoon really opened my eyes to how indifferent our country is becoming.
Let me explain…
On Friday afternoon, I took a normal trip with my wife out to Target. Things went along as usual… until we were headed back. We were driving along University Ave in Pleasant Hill (a fairly major road) when the battery in our car died. We were able to pull off onto a side street and get out of the way. But, as we sat their waiting for a friend to come help… at least 10 cars drove by… and not a single one even rolled down their window to ask if we were okay.
Okay… whatever.
But, that’s not the half of it.
Once our friend arrived, we got the car jumped and thought we were headed to get a new battery. But, as it turns out, our situation was worse than we thought. Our battery was dead dead. The kind of dead that won’t get you down the block, let alone across town. Unfortunately, we found this out smack dab in the middle of University Ave. Anybody who lives in Des Moines knows what that means. It’s like having your car die on ‘O’ Street in Lincoln… or on 72nd in Omaha. It’s not good.
And, not only did none of the 100s of cars that passed ask if we were okay… most honked and yelled and a few even damn near hit us as we were trying to get off of University… all busy, busy people in too much of a hurry to even slow down so as not to kill us… let alone ask if we were okay or try to help us.
Now, let me say right here… I don’t expect anybody to have helped us. I’m not the type of person who expects things from other people. I’m not mad at any of the people who drove by, honked, yelled, etc. And, I don’t think they’re wrong. It’s their choice and I respect it.
But, I’m just in awe of how indifferent we’ve all really become. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone in trouble on the side of the road and I drove by not giving a shit – just like all those people who drove by us.
I believe it has to do with technology. Technology is making us indifferent. We don’t see people as people anymore… we see them as usernames and contacts in our contacts list. It seems like we’re all engulfed in our digital world of big screen TVs, web interfaces, and text messages that we’ve created distance between us and the human beings around us. We just don’t care anymore.
I lived in my house for almost a year now… and I’ve talked to my neighbors less than 10 times in that year. These are my next door neighbors! Yet, I’ve talked to friends I met once in Texas at least 100 times in that same time span. I’d rather text somebody than call them – or chat via Skype instead of person to person. Hell, as I’m sitting here writing this right now… my wife is try to have a conversation with me and I’m ignoring her!
It’s kind of pathetic really.
I’m not sure what all of this means, but I do think technology is changing the way we interact with one another in more ways than we realize. And, I believe we really have to consciously choose to give a shit about the people around us… something, I think past generations never dealt with on the level we are. And, I also think I’m glad as hell we had a cell phone; otherwise, that headline may have just been a reality.