Brave New World, Part 2

Last night I walked down to my local Bank of America ATM to deposit a check. This is one of those storefront 10 by 10 well-lit ATMs right out on a busy city street, hardly a dangerous place to transact with your money, but still anything can happen. I lived in New York city for twenty years, right through the "homeless" 80s. In those days, ATMs were dimly lit and beggars stood there and sometimes jumped you until Citibank put cops nearby.

Since the Obama victory, people are talking about a shift in how we see people of color: African Americans, Asians, Latinos, even Middle Easterners. When I inserted my card to enter the small space, already there at the two machines were six young men, all dark-skinned and no one over the age of (maybe) twenty. They spoke Spanish and they were somewhat fidgety.

My self-protective radar went up and I thought about what to do. I took the deposit envelope and when they finished I put in my check, but noticed they were standing nearby and not yet leaving, even though it seemed they had finished their own transactions. I decided to not take out any cash.

When I turned around one of them went back to the ATM with the others looking on. He had a wad of cash to deposit but was confused and awkward. finally he turned back to me and asked in Spanish how to do a "deposito". He didn't realize he needed the deposit envelope for the cash. He handed me 480 dollars and I sealed the envelope and went to the machine to watch and coach him through it. And it was a good thing. He kept hitting "cheques" instead of "ahorra". Anyway, he got it right, finally and thanked me. They, all six of them thanked me.

In five minutes of my life, fear turned to trust, to my natural ability to take care of others. This is a new day. Know hope.