When confronted with something disgusting, Sam Delaney reacted instinctively. It was his son who became the voice of reason.
There’s a classic joke about an old man standing on a mountaintop, surveying the town he grew up in. Approached by a couple of passers-by, he tells them: “Look at that church. I helped build it. But do they call me John the Church Builder? They do not. Look at that school. I taught four generations of children in that school. But do they call me John the Teacher? No. And yet, I fuck ONE goat…”
Apologies if you’ve heard that a million times. It’s an old one but a good one. It’s not just funny, it has a moral which rings true in any society: very often, public opinion is based on highly selective evidence. But we must not allow anecdotal evidence and isolated incidents to sour our view of other people or the world we live in. Humankind relies on this.
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All of which brings me to an unsavoury incident last week. My son and I were taking our dog, Cookie, on her evening walk when we saw a man crouching down and taking a shit in our street. On the pavement outside our neighbour’s house. I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered someone shitting in your street before but, trust me, you have no idea how you will respond until it happens to you. I completely span out into a state of anger, confusion and judgmentalism.
I shouted at him to stop but, clearly, he had reached a stage where his progress could not be reversed. I told him what he was doing was disgusting. He reasoned that I let my dog do the same thing. I shouted back at him: “BUT YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING!”
