Feel The Attention

The voices continued. I still couldn’t understand why I could not open my eyes. “There, there. Just lie still” A woman said. I heard the door to the butcher’s shop ring, the spring mounted bell, and another voice proudly announced to those gathered around the prone and injured child. “Ambulance is on the way!” “Oh, good”, another voice added. The incident had obviously caused a bit of a local stir and a crowd of several had congregated. Several adults, stopped on their way to work to observe the injured. Anything of interest, to act as a delay. I could hear other school students, some who knew who I was. None who actually seemed interested in anything other than I was bleeding from the head and face. Then the comment that was probably most important. “Did anyone see the car that hit him?” Silence. This was followed by what I have in the last twelve years come to recognise as a problem with all witnesses. “Yes, it was a big white sedan” Said one. ‘No it was yellow” said another. “When I looked up I saw the red car driving off.” Said a third. Eye witnesses. They can be helpful, but are never the most reliable of information sources.

There are so many variations in what people see, and more in what they think they see. Even worse in what they hear and think they hear. My least favourite line in ‘Eye Witness’ news reports are comments such as, ‘It was like a bomb going off’ or ‘It was like a war zone.” If these were eye witnesses, my very first question to them would be, “and when have you heard a bomb going off?’ or “When were you in a war zone?” With some of the many returned servicemen and also the international refugees we are now seeing in our local society of course, these phrases may indeed be recognisable, but generally the people saying these phrases have very likely never been anywhere more dangerous than the local theme park or carnival.

Eye-witness. It actually means they saw the event. In many cases, particularly in traffic matters, the eye-witnesses have only become so, after the actual crash. Occasionally they react to the sound of the tyre squealing on the road surface, or the blaring of a horn. Even with the fastest reaction time, an incident can be over before the eye witnesses have turned in the direction of the sound. Rather than turning in time to see the incident take place. In all the years of driving, working and living, I myself have been an actual eye witness to only about four serious events. I have observed and heard the incident prior to, during and as it occurred. I have seen dozens of partially observed incidents, and hundreds of post incidents. But the only ones I would consider myself as an actual eye witness to, in which I could tell the entire story from start to finish, you can count on one hand.

(Continued tomorrow)