Passionately Apathetic!

This is a funny story told to me by a friend recently. Tonight another friend used it to illustrate a typical Polish trait/stereotype. She said that Poles are reluctant to get involved. She said typically people stay to themselves and just stay out of each others' ways and rarely help or stop things. This she told me after I told her about my tram experience today. I was riding the tram and it was fairly crowded but not too bad. And this young guy, maybe early twenties decided to use his cell phone like a boombox and started blasting very loud Polish rap music. People looked at him, rolled their eyes and moved to the front of the tram. Pretty soon he was alone in the back of the tram enjoying his music still. And I was surprised that no one had bothered to say anything to him or asked him to turn it down.

So as Karolina was telling me about this habit of Poles, she reminded me of this story from Radek.

Radek has this thing about helping people who are homeless, sick, helpless or even drunk. It's his thing to collect life stories and listen to people that otherwise seldom get heard. He has a hundred stories with happy endings and feel-good vibes about these situations and I find I can listen to him go on about it for hours. He is a great story teller on top of having had these experiences.

So this one time, Radek was on a train or tram and this homeless man fell asleep in his seat and fell to the floor. Radek went directly to him and tried to wake him and help him back to his seat. Another man on the train was outraged by this behavior. He told Radek to stop it right away and get away from the "filthy bum who is probably diseased." And Radek said no. He said the man needed help and he would help him. The man became enraged with Radek and approached him aggressively screaming and cursing. As I recal from the story, Radek nearly came to blows with the man before leaving the train.

The irony of course being that this man cared so much that Radek should not care, that he nearly beat him up!