A memory from June just randomly popped into my head out of nowhere which I totally forgot about straight after it happened. Which isn't that surprising because straight after it happened me and my friends lost two of our group and then missed the last train and had to spend £50 on a cab...but I digress (I'M A LEADING MAN AND THE LIES I WEAVE ARE OH SO INTO CATS DOO DOO DOOO DOO shutup brain).
Anyway.
This is the memory.
It was after the Green Day concert and me and Sam and Megg were waiting outside Wembley Stadium for the other two in our group. Whilst this was going on a girl was standing near us looking panicked, she was probably about our age. I asked her if she was alright and she said that she had got split up from her group and her phone was out of battery and she had no way of contacting them. So straight away I offered her my phone and told her to ring them and I said that we wouldn't leave her standing there by herself. She looked GENUINELY shocked at this, and so so grateful. At the time I thought nothing of it because in all honesty it would never cross my mind to act any way differently to that in that situation. And now I'm thinking about it it's actually quite interesting. The reason I did what I did and said what I said was because I know for a fact if I was surrounded by 20,000 people who I didn't know at 11pm in London with no means of contacting anyone that I did no, I would be terrified. I would have wandered round for ages in the hope someone asked me if I was alright and offered to lend me their phone. I'd have probably eventually mustered the courage to ask someone if I could borrow a phone if no one offered it to me first, but I would probably be crying my eyes out and in an absolute state of panic by this point. So obviously when I saw someone in this situation I wanted to make sure they were okay and not scared or at risk.
She was an absolute stranger. Was I too trusting? I handed her my phone. I didn't even think twice about it. I knew nothing whatsoever about her, she could have run off with it for all I knew. Is it strange that I was protective of a completely random human?
I don't think it was really. I can relate to her situation because I go to concerts a lot and I don't like being by myself in crowded places and when I don't have access to my phone I feel like the worst case scenario WILL always happen.
But now that I'm properly thinking it through I can't help but wonder if I am being incredibly naive to not even second-think doing something like letting a stranger use my phone in amongst a crowd of 20,000 people.
Anyone got any thoughts on this?
3 comments:
I guess I'd probably feel the same way. I've done things like that without second guessing it until later because that's just the kind of person I am. I like to think of people as good until they prove that they aren't :P Probably not a particularly safe outlook, but usually what I do nonetheless. I would be terrified if I had been in her shoes as well.
In some ways the kindest thing was asking her if she was ok in the first place. It's very easy to rush on by in a situation like that, and not really feel that bad about it. Once you had asked I guess you'd have felt like quite a heel not then helping her and depending on the value of your phone perhaps the risk wasn't that great when there were 3 of you and one of her. :)
I think that it's really nice that you did that for that girl. Like you said, she was terrified.
There needs to be more people in the world that would do that kind of thing for other people :)
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