Jac Jac

The Dong Lerringer is LIVE #Huntshowdown @HuntShowdown

fucking disappointment

A man collapsed on a Tokyo train platform at 7:40 a.m. Rush hour. Two hundred people saw it. Me included. Nobody moved. Not because we didn't care. In Japan, we wait. We don't want to intrude. We wait for someone who has the right to step in. The man next to me didn't wait. My friend's dad. 68. First time out of America. A volunteer firefighter from a town of 900 people in Iowa. He dropped his coffee, knelt down, and started chest compressions. Then he looked up and shouted, "Somebody call 911!" Wrong number. Wrong country. A high school girl understood anyway. She called 119. A station worker ran for the AED. Two salarymen held back the crowd. Once one person went first, everyone moved. The ambulance came. The man was breathing. The station worker bowed to him. Then the girl. Then the whole platform. He had no idea what to do. So he picked up his empty coffee cup and said, "Well. We missed our train." On the next train, I asked how he moved so fast. He was quiet for a long time. "Summer of '84. My dad collapsed at a church picnic. Fifty people standing around. Nobody knew what to do. I was one of the fifty." He joined the fire department the next week. Forty years. Never paid a dollar. "If you wait for somebody else," he said, "nobody comes." Two weeks later, a letter arrived through the station. A photo of the man, holding his granddaughter. On the back, in careful English: "Thank you for not waiting." My friend called me that night. His dad read the letter once. Didn't say a word. Got in his truck. He drove to the cemetery behind the church. Sat down by his father's grave. And read it out loud. Then he said: "I didn't wait this time, Dad."