A few weeks ago I was on the train. A young woman was sitting across from me, when a man came asking for money. The woman and I looked at each other, we spoke through our eyes… we would like to help, but he was a stranger, we did not know where that would lead, so we did not give any money.

Once the man left, the woman said, “I’m afraid to help people now.”

”What do you mean,” I said.

She told me that a few days before she was on the train at 1:30 pm. She had a seat close to the exit, where the doors open. There were probably 10 people on board. She was on her phone texting. A young man got up to exit, when the doors opened, he quickly grabbed her phone out of her hands and was gone!

She was startled, scared, in horror… all the motions we go through when we have just been robbed.

We discussed the fact that when we are on our phones, we are oblivious to our surroundings. We also talked about the sadness in having to live in a world where we feel we need to be invisible, i.e. to not bring attention to ourselves, dress plainly and so on.

This picture from Pixabay.com illustrates how easy it is for someone to pull the phone out of our hands.

I share this story today as a reminder to be aware of your surroundings. We never know when something like this might happen to us. I’ve been passing the word along to fellow passengers myself.

Tell your friends/family, even holding your phone, so it cannot be grabbed out of your hands would be a deterrent. We need to help each other.

On a happier note, we are having Spring weather. It’s beautiful.

GUESS WHAT – snow flurries predicted for Thursday!? We don’t believe it!