Being a Good Samaritan

I will never forget the kind truck driver that came to our rescue while we were driving through Texas. My friends and I were on vacation. We got a flat

near Dallas on the expressway.

Three 20 something gals on the side of a road, very far from Wisconsin. A man driving an 18 wheeler, stopped, changed the tire. He refused to be paid. He said he stopped because he hoped someone would stop for his daughter.

I hate to be the cynic but remember the maxim: No good deed goes unpunished. Be careful where you intervene. It could get you sued ... or killed. I always try to do the right thing, but I always put my safety first. A half a good deed is better than none.

I always perform the good deed but I do it with caution. A few weeks ago, I saw two men duking it out on a highway next to their vehicles. I wasn't about to get in the middle, but I did call the police.

I saw a woman in the market beating on her little kid and screaming. Using both caution and a willingness to intervene, I called the manager and then, standing near her, "accidentally" ran my shopping cart into her legs - not hard, just enough to distract her. I began apologizing profusely and by that time the manager got there, the incident was over. Privately, I told him what I had done and he was happy to see the problem leave his store. I would have called the cops, but I knew by the time they got there, the incident would have been long over. As it was, I stopped it for the moment. "Sorry, kid; if your sack of s--t mother is going to kill you, it won't be on my watch.

People have also helped me in times of need and I can't thank them enough. It is nice to see a little chivalry in this age of individual, corporate and government meanness.

thanks for sharing. I like happy stories. :)

i will never forget being one of four 20 something college boys on the side of the road next to a broken Datsun. It was three cold winter hours on a busy freeway in the middle of Wisconsin country before anyone finally stopped to help us. People wouldn't even stop! At one point, we were even waving a white t-shirt like a flag.

It was kind of hilarious... three college girls wouldn't have been alone for more than 5 minutes.

a little goodness is better than no goodness! :)

Great question dj, and one I wonder about too. I'm not sure its always "right" to be a good samaritan...when is an attempt to help actually enabling or butting in...and when should we do more, risk be damned...should I call social services when I see the parent abusing a child (as in Milt's great story) or am I stepping out of bounds? I just had a conversation with a friend who, abused as a child, wonders how all the aware adults could have pretended not to see. I don't want to be one of those adults who ignores and therefore allows abuse to continue.

Protecting the child feels to me like job one, but if social services declines to remove the child from the home, does the abuse get worse because the parent has been confronted? How do we know how and when to step in?

Yes, I have many stories where a stranger has come to my aid, to my unending gratitude, and a few cases where a stranger has jumped in uninformed to a situation and only made things worse. I have been helpful, and have been an unwanted intrusion in equal measure I'm sure. How do we know?

I think in the end we act on instinct, do what we think is right at the time. But I'd love to hear more about how others look at the issues, and how we determine when and how to help/mind our own business.

Dj

I saw on 60 minutes or Nightline or one of those shows, where they put a couple in the park and the guy starts getting agressive, mostly verbal with the woman. And the show was filming the reaction of others nearby or passing by.

There were a few woman that stood up to the guy. But there were more men that got involved. But there were a lot that you could see were bothered, but didn't do anything.

I don't know what that proves, but it was interesting.

In the 60s there was the case of the young woman that was attacked and killed outside her apt as she was going home. Neighbors heard, but didn't want to get involved. No one called the police even.

I do fear apathy. When AIDs and all the misinformation and ignorance was out there, I believed that a lot of people were going to bleed to death, because people were so afraid to get blood on them.

Reading Milts about child abuse in public, I had worked in grocery stores and sometimes even warning a parent that their kid shouldn't stand in the cart, the parent would get mad and condesending. They hadn't realized that my concern was from seeing kids fall out of or over in carts and hit the linoleum that was covering the cement foundation.

But I had a close friend that allowed her ex to neglect abuse their 5yr old when he was caring for her. She allowed it because he would provide nicely for her and she didn't want to lose that.

I chewed her out and told her to report him, but she wouldn't. So I wrote her a letter ending our friendship and stating that she needed to take better care of her daughter and if I heard from her more stories I would call the authorities. I was a coward and I'm ashamed that I didn't call CPS. I had others friends that lost jobs, etc due to CPS and I was afraid to cause trouble. So much for the 5yr old.

However to redeem myself, somewhat. There was a disabled elderly neighbor that I helped out. I started noticing changes and she was also calling the police due to her confusion/dementia. So I wrote her daughter and she contacted me and thanked me. But she never did anything and 1.5 yrs later the woman was in a really bad way. So I called the daughter, but she whined that her mother was difficult. So I waited over an hour for the daughter to even make an effort to come over to her mothers...she didn't and wouldn't even answer the phone to her mother. So I called the police and by law she was removed from the house that night 1.5 yrs ago and the daughter was forced to put her in a nursing home. Both the daughter and the elderly woman have more then enough assets. But the evil daughter wouldn't let anyone know where her mother is.

It can be hard to do the right thing. No one wants to be disliked or cussed out. Most people avoid conflict. But who will protect the children? Who will protect the elderly?