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I flew home to New York from Seattle Saturday night, landed at JFK, retrieved my bag at Baggage Claim, headed for the taxi stand and there, in a long slow line, suddenly heard people shouting, "Doctor! Doctor!" and saw, fifty feet away, a twentyish woman lying face down on the sidewalk, an older woman kneeling over her. The kneeling woman shouted, "Does anyone know this girl? Anybody? Please!" Some traffic guys in bright orange vests ran off and came back with two big burly cops. The young woman lay motionless. One of the cops got on his phone and the other lay down next to her and put his hand on her back and spoke to her.
It was a dramatic sight, a lone person fallen in the midst of a busy scene in a huge city and you could see the alarm in the faces of the people in the taxi line: there but for the grace of G od go I. I wanted to stay and find out if she was okay but I am not a doctor and the cops seemed to have it well in hand. So I got in a cab and headed home to Manhattan.
I got home and googled "woman collapsed at JFK" and got a stream of clippings about President Kennedy.
I thought about her in church Sunday morning and prayed for her well-being. G od does not need Google and He knows what we pray for without our having to go into detail. I prayed that she was enjoying the city and now had a keener sense of living in a civil society — where we look after each other as best we can.
I've had my own wobbly moments due to poor vision and have crashed on the sidewalks of New York and I know that if you do, you will be surrounded within five seconds by concerned New Yorkers.
Something similar happened Friday as I was walking around Whidbey Island north of Seattle where I was about to perform at a theater. I guess I must've looked wobbly because a man named Glenn stopped me and asked if I was okay and then he walked with me up a steep hill in the town of Langley. He was a retired home builder and he was so pleasant to talk to, I bought him a ticket to my show.
It's a good show. I like it myself and other people seem to as well. It's just me, talking, sometimes I sing a little, sometimes the crowd sings with me. I sing about the glory of the coming of the Lord and they are all there, a cappella, in harmony, astonished by how good they sound. They haven't sung it since 9th grade and they still know all the words, even the "beauty of the lilies" and the "glory in His bosom."
I also talk about my upbringing in the Sanctified Brethren with their mournful singing and apocalyptic preaching about the imminent end of the world when we'll fly up to paradise, and my first paid job picking potatoes on a truck farm and dragging a heavy burlap bag of them on chill November days with a brisk wind blowing dust in my face as the farmer yelled at me that the bag wasn't quite full, which cured me of any interest I might've had in hard work and also got me into the field of comedy and into the arms of the Episcopal church where the preaching is mostly about kindness and mercy.
People like this story and it happens to be true. I combine it with others that are less true. I don't work from a script. The monologue takes some sharp turns. I toss in some poems, some jokes. I might sing the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There," which my crowd knows and they love this opportunity to sing "Oooooo" falsetto. A person seldom gets the opportunity. I do a ninety-minute show without a breath of political commentary and people are grateful for this. I even avoid words like "hump," "bump," "dump," and "terrace," "ferrous," and "plaster of paris."
I do have a point of view, of course. I remember that sharp sense of alarm in the taxi line at the sight of the fallen woman and the knowledge that she was alone. We are a civilized people. Don't doubt it for a minute.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "Cheerfulness". Buy it at a 38% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.