1/My daughter fell down the stairs last week. She had trouble moving her wrist, so I took her to the emergency room. Upon entry, typical of COVID times, we had to have our temperatures taken. We did, we registered, we sat, we waited. Mostly elderly people in the waiting room.

2/ But not all. Range of ages. As we sat and quietly talked, I watched a frail old man in a wheelchair, seemingly alone, be checked in. After answering the intake questions, the woman who was checking him in came out from around the desk and began pushing him to the waiting area.

3/Suddenly yelling could be heard from the entrance vestibule. Loud. A lot of “Ma’am! Ma’am!” Then, “Don’t touch him! Don’t touch me! They won’t let me in! Don’t touch him! You may not touch him!” It took a while to decipher who was yelling and why, but eventually I figured out

4/that the old man was not, in fact, alone. He had an aide. The aide was the person yelling from the vestibule. It seems that the old man was in her care and he had gotten in before her. Honestly, I don’t know what the hold up was, but it was pretty obvious by this point that the

5/ aide, who was Black, was panicking. Whether the moment called for panicking is not for me to say. But there were a lot of “f yous” thrown at the intake woman and a lot of noise so someone called security and two white policeman came to the waiting room. This further agitated

6/the aide. They began to question her, she kept yelling, they said they would remove her, she yelled some more. And I watched. I watched this small misunderstanding become a THING. But I could tell that she just had a ton of anxiety about being separated from the man for whom

7/she was responsible and she felt like she was losing control. So I got up from my chair, went over and inserted myself into the conversation. I told the security guards that I had seen everything and that the aide just got scared, that was all. She got scared, but everything

8/was really okay. The guards - white- actually seemed to take in what I said and their tones changed. I could feel things diffuse. I went and sat back down. They slowly walked away after a couple of calmer words to her. I watched her turn to the old man and say something to him

9/as she held his hand. Seemed everything was going to be okay. It wasn’t easy for me to say something to the security guards. I felt a bit foolish and a bit that I was nosing into something that wasn’t my business. I know people were watching me and I sensed it. I thought maybe

10/I kind of made a fool of myself. But as the days went on I changed my perception. I think that even if it didn’t matter in that particular instance, it mattered because it strengthened my ally muscle. It’s so easy to watch and not do. And the more White people are willing to

11/look foolish and make mistakes here and there - I mean, she could have told me to go suck it and I have to be willing to not take that personally. Anyway, the point is, the whole experience gave me the confidence that I could do it again and again and at some point it might

12/actually really matter.