Summer snowball

A bicycle rider rear-ended my car today. Despite flying glass, we were unscathed (though Little One is quite shaken), but the bike rider was cut up a bit and will likely be very sore tomorrow. We exchanged addresses and dispensed first aid, and were ready to depart when we heard sirens; in this day and age of cell phones, somebody must have called for help, and flashing lights announced the arrival of the police and a trio of red trucks.

Yesterday’s mail brought the glossy magazine from my Alma Mater: Willamette University’s motto is non nobis solum nati sumus – not unto ourselves alone are we born. It’s from Cicero’s De Officiis, a tome that has been required reading for classically-educated persons for centuries. The whole thing got me thinking about the events that are cascading from that momentary glance away by the fellow behind me, the glance that meant he couldn’t stop in time.

As I was talking to the policeman, I looked up to see my Darling Husband walking towards me. He was returning from a team lunch at Mayuri’s, their favorite Indian restaurant (great lunch buffet: don’t miss the chicken makhani), when he saw my distinctive old Volvo stopping traffic and Number One Son standing outside of it. He asked his co-worker to stop, and hopped out. As they drove off, his co-worker called out that he would cover for my Darling in his presentation that was to start in five minutes.

The policeman, clearly unimpressed with my husband’s miraculous appearance, instructed me to pull over into the next parking lot, since I was blocking traffic. (Yes, I had decided to block traffic to protect the bicycle rider who had fallen in the street.) The next parking lot was a long half-block away, but as we drove off we could see the fire truck (a tiller), fire engine and aid car arrive on the scene and offer the bike rider some real first aid (more effective at stopping the bleeding than the neon knee Band-Aids we usually carry). Number One Son informs me that the three emergency response vehicles are crewed by five people. Two more police cars arrived, one carrying an officer who specializes in accident investigation, and one sent by dispatch because they fear the worst when they hear the words “car” and “bicycle” used in the same sentence as “accident.”

At this point, I can stop to tally it up: there were three of us in the car, the shaken bike rider, an anonymous 911 caller, at least one 911 dispatcher, a passer-by who kindly pointed the way to the hospital, my Darling Husband, his two co-workers, three police officers, and five fire department personnel. That’s a total of 18 people caught in the rolling snowball, and that’s before I start calling glass replacement and insurance folks.

So what does this have to do with sustainability and food, you ask? It’s about paying attention. It’s easy to see the cause and effect if you don’t pay attention at the wheel, even if it is a two-wheeler, ostensibly doing the right thing for the planet. It’s less clear what happens when you don’t pay attention, blindly assuming you’re doing the right thing in how you source your food or feed yourself. But that’s just what we need to do – pay attention. Because a lot of people, from the farmer to those we love, will be affected if we don’t. Or, as Willamette’s classics professor put it, “Because we exist in society, to harm another is to harm ourselves.” And vice-versa.