Humbled

Good deed before 10 AM? #boom, #winning.

There I was… mastering an entirely different language- my Italian, conjugating under my breath -ire verbs- the hardest to remember, and a woman in her 30’s, who I’ve seen before (I never forget a face, or voice for this matter), with a high pitched childish girlie voice, is asking a guy to please move.

Head-phoned man doesn’t move–she gets by anyway, and sits right next to me. A large woman in what seemed like decent dress pants and leather jacket, quite put together really.

She took out a container of Wet Ones wiped off I-don’t-know what from her hands, put the soiled cloths in a plastic bag, put the container away, and then pulled out the AMNY… only looking at the back classifieds, same with the Metro New York.

From what I could assume (and I do a lot of that on the train- I can read people pretty well and am uber observant), she’s mentally disabled; some kind of developmental issues and probably has trouble finding/keeping work.

Anyway…what humbled me? She asked the woman to her left how to spell something. The woman either didn’t speak English, or didn’t want to help her… I’m going with the latter.

She then turned to me and asked how to spell  “medical records”… shortly after… “hospital attendant”. The poor woman couldn’t spell. She knew her letters, and assuming she could read based on the newspaper, or was she faking it?

It didn’t help that her handwriting, scribbled onto the back of the AMNY, looked like that of a 6 year old:

I got looks from people but I couldn’t help but feel compassion and help her. 

YOU can read this blog, and rewrite it on paper if you wanted to right? Without help? Don’t take the little things in life for granted. 

Thinking I know exactly what I’ll be researching for volunteer opportunities. Stay tuned…