Through the Screen – Dystopian Experience on Sunday Morning

Today is Sunday

I got up this morning with plans to work on a project for my sister. I got all the family up and running, a cup of coffee and even the dog packed in the car. There wasn’t enough time or patience to make a good breakfast, so I stopped at the local bagel store up the road.

As we approached the store, I noticed a car in the middle of the street seemingly parked right in front. I pulled the car over and asked everyone to stay inside. I looked up and noticed people standing near and around the car. Some people had their phones held up and others just walked by while looking. As I approached the car, I saw a person slumped backward with the car running. I couldn’t open any of the doors and the windows were shut tight. I started banging on the window to wake the person up. I couldn’t even tell if the person was a man or woman as my view was obscured and they were in position I couldn’t see the face well. My wife jumped out of our car as she noticed what was happening and started to ask me what was going on.

I couldn’t tell how long the person, I later identified as a woman was in this position, but I could see she was breathing and I could also see an open can of alcohol in the cup holder. We asked if anyone called the police and people were saying they tried the local police office. I didn’t know what that meant and we didn’t see an ambulance or police car in sight. My wife called 911 and gave them a description of what was going on. She works in drug prevention and said it looked like an overdose. It wasn’t long before the police came and determined the woman, indeed, had overdosed. They issued Narcan twice to wake her up and get her into the ambulance and they also found heroin in her purse. I am very confident at this point if my wife didn’t call, this person would have been in serious trouble.

I have to say that I am very confused as to what has happened in our society. When a traumatic situation occurs, we look through our screens as if we are watching a reality television show. We record it for social media but we take no action. I reflected on all of the social injustices and wrongs today and I realized we are witnesses through the screen. The screen or lens becomes a barrier to our humanity even if we are physically present.

One person said to my wife, “Thank you, people don’t want to get involved these days.” He was one of the people standing there. He was one that “didn’t want to get involved.”

This isn’t a realization which demands a call to service but this is an important moment to reflect upon. If we don’t see how we have slowly started to lose ourselves and we do nothing about it, we will all wind up on the other end of the screen.

At some point, you may become a recording on someone’s social media post while they observe your death through their phone.

I am thankful to my wife for making the call to 911 and thankful to the responding officers and emergency personnel that saved this woman’s life. I am also thankful to https://njprevent.com/ Prevention Resources where my wife works for teaching me and my family about this increasingly common situation of drug overdose and what to do when you are in this type of situation.

If you need help, information or would like to help, I am adding their resource page here https://njprevent.com/resources/

Please share as this was a true story that happened today September 13th 2020