Published in The Globe and Mail, Facts and Arguments Essay, 2005
Reprinted in Reader’s Digest, March 2005
I’ve seen him a few times, always on the Yonge subway line in Toronto. He wanders from passenger to passenger with his crossword puzzle, saying nothing, holding the newspaper out in front of him with a questioning look on his child-like face.
He is a tall man – well over six feet – with smooth skin the colour of dark chocolate and eyes and hair as black as pitch. He laughs often, a low cackle, and for no apparent reason. Maybe he is laughing at jokes in his head. Maybe he is laughing at the subway riders, annoyed at not finding any available seats. Maybe he is amused at the rocking of the subway, the sudden jolts that leave us scrambling for a bar to hold on to. More likely, though, his laughs have something to do with the crossword puzzle he clutches in both hands.
The first person he approaches refuses to look up at him. She is thinking, “Great, why do the morons always pick on me?” Still, he does not get discouraged for quite awhile. He stands there, his crossword puzzle extended towards her, waiting for her to help him solve the next clue. Eventually he gives up and tries someone else. This person gets up from his seat and makes his way through the crowd to the other end of the subway car. Crossword puzzle man follows him with his eyes, his lips parted in confusion.
It is the same every time I have seen him. People shy away from him, they ignore him, they refuse to meet his gaze. Perhaps they are afraid of his strangeness, perhaps disgusted by his retardation. Here we sit, we Canadians, the people the world has dubbed, “Nice.” We are always ready to help out a fellow traveller – we offer them advice on the best buses to catch, we take time out of our busy days to give directions to a lost soul, we walk them through purchasing subway tokens at the automated token machine, and we feel proud at having been asked for our services. We sit smugly on the subway or bus afterwards, feeling good about our so-called Samaritanism.
But not one of us helps out Crossword Puzzle Man. He wanders up and down the subway cars, waiting in vain for someone to offer assistance. Who knows how long he has waited? Who knows how long he will wait? Yesterday, I would have said forever, but this morning on the Yonge subway line, something happened.
It was early, not yet eight o’clock, when I saw him, making his way past the back packs and bulky winter coats, his crossword puzzle in hand. I examined the other passengers, wondering which ones he would stop at. There were a couple of high school girls, a few students who looked as if they were on their way to class at one of the universities, a businessman looking anxiously at his cell phone, waiting for the service bar to get higher, an elderly Chinese woman, her hands filled with plastic bags. Which one would Crossword Puzzle Man choose?
I was disappointed when he stopped in front of a wealthy-looking middle-aged woman wearing a fur muff, her make-up applied immaculately. She won’t like this at all, I thought. She’s too proper, too done-up. She’s not used to dealing with the wackos found on the public transit system.
But there he stopped, his shoulders stooped, his newspaper outstretched towards her, his eyebrows raised in question. I waited for the brush off that would, inevitably, come.
“Oh hello!” she said cheerily, to my amazement.
He laughed his deep guffaw.
“How are you?” she asked, a smile forming on her lips.
Again, the laugh. I waited for her to look at me, to ask me with her eyes what the heck was going on with this weirdo.
“I see you are doing the crossword puzzle,” she said, smiling all the time.
He laughed in response and thrust the newspaper closer to her face.
She nodded and examined the paper for a few seconds. “One across. Cosmetics brand, Mary blank. Do you know a make-up brand that starts with Mary?”
He cackled low.
She smiled at him. “No? Do you know Mary Kay?”
He looked at her with lips parted.
“Kay. K – A – Y. You write that in. K – A – Y. Right there.” She indicated the spot on his puzzle.
He laughed again and pushed the newspaper and pencil at her.
“You want me to do it?”
Another low cackle.
She wrote it in for him and handed back the paper and pencil. Again, he waited in front of her, lips parted, questions all over his face. “Let’s see what two across is,” she said.
They continued for several stops until it was time for her to get off. I looked around at the faces of the other riders as she filled in words and as he laughed at the joy of it all. The faces were almost entirely filled with smiles. It was partly amusement, but not completely. There was more to it. I read compassion for the mentally-challenged young man on a few faces, but again, there was something else. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
It was just as the well-dressed lady was preparing to disembark from the subway car that it occurred to me. Admiration. On every face, there was admiration for that lady in the expensive fur muff.
She taught us all a lesson that morning. She taught us that being a Good Samaritan means not picking and choosing whom you help. It means offering assistance to anyone, even those who look different or act in ways that we don’t understand. It means confronting our fears about those who live on the fringes of our society, in places we never visit or think about. She taught us that being a Good Samaritan means helping anyone in need.
Even Crossword Puzzle Man.