I was coming out of Whole Foods on 7th Ave. around the corner from the Chelsea when I heard 
a loud crash. A guy in a blue SUV had rear-ended a cab at the corner of 24th street. Despite the loud noise, it was clear that neither of the cars had been damaged.
A middle-aged man in a shirt and tie sprang out of the SUV and ran to the window of the cab and started apologizing profusely: “Oh my God I’m so sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I am so sorry!”
The cab driver, who looked Indian, got out to look at the damage. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” the cab driver said. “It’s nothing.”
The SUV driver then burst into tears and dropped to his knees, begging forgiveness. He would have embraced the cab driver around the knees, had not the Indian man scampered nimbly out of the way. Instead, the SUV driver started kissing the bumper of the cab, and weeping.
There were some Whole Food workers standing nearby, taking a cigarette break. They had seen the whole thing, and now they called out: “Dude, get up! It’s nothing, it’s no big deal! There’s no need to act like that!”
The cab driver, too, kept repeating that it was nothing, that there was no damage. Still on his knees, the SUV man continued to apologize.
All I could think of was that the SUV guy must have been having a bad day, and had finally reached his breaking point. All it took was that one incident to send him over the edge. New York will do that to you. It could have been anything; it just turned out to be that one thing.
The cab driver was helping the man to his feet as I walked away. Having just braved the nightmarish shopping experience of the Whole Foods, I thought I could empathize especially well. (Copyright 2006, Ed Hamilton)
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