The Gap Between Knowing and Doing
The Conversation I Never Had
I’m staying in a tiny studio apartment in a capital city in Eastern Europe. My neighbor, a chain smoking, overweight Roma who I’ve never seen wear a shirt, approached me one night. “I see rat in you house. Big rat,” he told me as he indicated its length with his hands, almost as if he was taking me into his confidence.
“A big rat?”, I asked. “Yeah, big rat,” and he made a wiggling motion with his hand and pointed to my door. Then his son, who appears chronically malnourished and grossly underdeveloped, emerged from his apartment with a very large woman I assume to be the boy’s mother. The boy meandered around the courtyard while we spoke.
It’s difficult to gauge the age of his son, who may have a disability. He’s very thin, looks sickly, is always in a diaper, and constantly has a nipple in his mouth. Best guess: 7.
“Thanks for telling me. I appreciate it,” I told him. He nodded and walked into his apartment.
Smoking
For me to exit the building, I need to walk by my neighbor’s equally tiny apartment. Every time I do, cigarette smoke billows out of their cracked door. I sometimes hear their son crying, and when he begins crying, they always shut the door.
Then I walk out of the foyer, my mind turning to other things. And I quickly forget.
Before my neighbor approached me about the rat, I thought about speaking with him about the dangers of secondhand smoke to his son. I don’t know exactly how much he and his partner smoke, but I’ve almost never seen either of them without a lit cigarette.
Source: https://www.mdanderson.org/cancer-types/lung-cancer.html
Dozens of times, I rehearsed what I’d say. In super basic English: “Smoking [I’d gesture with my hands as if I held an invisible cigarette] not good for kids. Bad.” Then I’d wait to see how he’d respond.
I don’t think anything would have ever come from my attempts to talk with him. If I did, I’d have spoken to him already.
Who Am I?
Who am I to tell him he shouldn’t smoke in front of his child? What gives me the right?
Perhaps more importantly, who am I not to tell him to smoke in front of his child? Who am I to ignore what I consider to be a monstrous and easily preventable health disaster? Who am I to pretend that I don’t know any better?
