In anticipation of a devastating car crash, I broke out of the house. I didn’t have to search for long, there it was right in front of me: an old Citroen was midway into the rear of a brand new BMW jeep. Imagine something like this:
I immediately went to check both cars to see if anybody was seriously wounded. There was an elderly couple in the BMW, and a mom with her 4-year-old in the back: all four of them utterly shocked and frozen. My neighbor, a lovely lady of 75 years old, also came out and assisted everybody out. I called the police.
The woman from the BMW immediately rushed out of the car to look at the back of the car. You could see in her eyes that she was devastated because of the damage.
Here’s the deal: it was 100% the fault of the car crashing from the rear, but BMW woman’s attitude was a little off. Why would she ignore the toddler? How important can car damage be?
The mom came out, and the toddler was frozen with fear. That was about at the same time the BMW woman began to cry and shouting at the mom.
Now we were all frozen. The BMW man at the wheel also came out and tried to calm the woman down.
My elderly neighbor was angry at the angry lady: don’t you see the toddler? How dare you?
The BMW woman was angry at the mom: Why couldn’t she be more careful? Why wouldn’t she slow down?
Suddenly there was a lot of anger and very little calm. All understandable in the heat of the situation.
***
I went in and brought a thermos of warm tea I prepared for myself and started to serve calmly without uttering a word. My neighbor was still throwing in judgments in defense of the mom.
Only once all the guards were down with some calming tea while waiting for the police to arrive, we heard the whole story.
***
It turns out that the toddler was throwing a tantrum, and mom was distracted. After she crashed she lost her mind shaking with the fear of damage to her baby girl.
This made us side even more with her. What a heartless bitch you have to be to think about your “material damage” in such a situation. It is a BMW X5 for god’s sake, it is not like you need money.
***
Then the “materialist woman” broke down in tears. She was inconsolable.
It turns out that her husband, who was behind the wheel, was a stage 4 cancer patient. He had only 3 months to live.
The day before she went ahead and got a line of credit. She bought his dream car. A brand new white BMW X5.
They got the car from the garage just an hour ago, heading home. This was their first drive out. She finally felt triumphant. A glimmer of hope to overturn it all…
In an instant, it came all crashing down.
She thought it was the end of it all. That she doesn’t deserve anything. That they are doomed. Anxiety wore her down: she was at the end of her rope.
We were all in tears by the time she finished. Tears were visible, but thankfully our shame of prejudice wasn’t.
***
Everyone has a story.
We don’t consider prejudice as prejudice when we think we know better than everybody else.
