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Story by Melanie Heimburg

I know it’s cliché to say “Life can drastically change in a split second,” but after my morning, those words are ringing true…

It’s an irregularly-sunny Tuesday morning and I’m waiting for Muni. If I’m not headed to school, I’m off to work, so the whole bus experience has become pretty mundane. I see a car trying to parallel park. The driver underestimates the car’s length and that icky metal-on-curb scraping noise is produced. Almost simultaneously, I hear a different car’s brakes screech to a halt, which I assume is on the busier and less visible Geary Street, one block over, since I don’t see anything.

Gosh, am I going to be late for class? Is that bus coming yet? My eyes strain to see the answer is “nope” so I look back down at my magazine.

“Help help!” a man’s voice urgently calls from somewhere behind me.

Another woman – blonde with a sweater tied around her waist – who is also waiting for the bus, and I dash halfway across the intersection to the yelling man after standing dumbfounded for a good 15 seconds trying to process what we’re seeing:

A smaller-sized person in dark clothing is crumpled upon the asphalt and the man yelling “help” is trying desperately to help him up, which doesn’t look like it’s working at all. It looks like the small body is disproportionately heavy. Up close, I see the crumpled person is an old, maybe 80-year-old, Asian man with hearing aides.

Oh man, poor guy must have tripped while crossing the street. Or worse, maybe he had a heart attack. He looks discombobulated.

The other man tells us he’s helping the old guy up in a voice that sounds like he’s barking orders. But it seems as though the very second we touch his drooping body, blood begins pouring from the crumpled man’s nose. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. This is not just a fallen elderly man, the woman with the sweater and I seem to realize at the same time.

“Did you hit this man?” she asks.

Holy crap. The crumpled man was hit by a car. He was hit by a car. Oh my gosh.

In a split second, it seems as every person in a two-block radius has sprung into action. At least three people are calling for help on their cell phones, somebody places their jacket under the crumpled man’s head, a woman who was driving stops her car in the intersection and steps onto the street to direct traffic around the incident, and a guy with a close-shaven beard who seems to be more medically knowledgeable than the rest of us takes control. A fellow journalism student and I (we ride the same bus) run two blocks to the fire station for help.

In a city where you regularly walk pass not one, but many people that sleep on the street every night, in a city where you know a bus schedule better than your neighbor, in a city that’s filled with people that are just going to leave in a week (hi tourists) it can be difficult to establish a sense of community.

But this morning, people who probably wouldn’t have even looked at each other while riding the bus came together as a group because somebody was in need.

I hear people constantly talking about my generation’s apathy toward politics or current events. I’d argue that it’s not just us – it’s the whole freaking nation. People don’t have time to make meaningful relationships or to get involved in all that confusing political stuff - they’re too busy trying to be individual and make enough money to “make it.”

So my point is this: it shouldn’t take a natural disaster or school shooting for people to come together. But it does – and the shelf life of compassion is seriously short when these things happen anyway. We as Americans tend to choose apathy on a daily basis because it’s easier, because we have the option to do so, because unless we’re faced with a crucial, undeniable need, there’s no need for us to care.

So don’t blame my generation.

Besides, maybe the apathy is the way to go when you forget that your life can change drastically change in a split-second.