Do the Right Thing

It's so easy to assume others will let us all down, because it happens all too often: the clothing that gets stained in a store and slyly placed back on the rack; the spill in a host’s home that’s just covered over; the stranger’s car that gets hit and walked away from.

Sitting Thursday morning outside the downtown , enjoying the cooler, less humid weather, I saw a woman in the cobblestone parking lot slam her Subaru into the rear fender of a parked car, which rocked violently. She realigned herself, finished parking, and then sat inside for a few minutes.

Being conditioned by society and news media, I glumly thought, "I'll just bet she's having that conversation in her head of whether or not she can get away with it." She eventually got out and walked inside, barely glancing at the other car, and my gut instinct told me to take a quick picture of her…and her license plate.

I really tried hard to assume that she went inside, swallowed her pride, and asked if anyone there drove the silver Honda she'd plowed into. As time went on and 10 minutes became 20, I became less confident that she was owning up to her mistake and more suspicious that she was hoping to wait out the only person on the patio at the time of the incident: me.

But a naive portion of my brain wanted to give her every chance to do right. She wouldn’t really leave without saying anything, would she? What monster does that?

When she emerged after about 25 minutes without anyone in tow and wasn't leaving a note, alarm bells went off. Who'd hear their car was damaged and not come out to investigate?

Unfortunately, my dog was with me so I was a bit hamstrung in what actions I could take. I'm not comfortable tying him up there unattended, so running inside wasn't an option, and I didn't want to risk the store getting some health violation from me quickly bringing him in.

So, using tech in an odd way, I opened my iPhone's Starbucks app, found the store's number as the driver left the scene, and placed a call that would be answered a mere 20 feet from me—probably not how Alexander Graham Bell envisioned it. I asked if anyone had come in mentioning hitting a silver Honda.

Sadly, it belonged to the girl who picked up the phone, Erica, the cheerful redhead who's probably gotten coffee for many people reading this hundreds of times over. More sadly, she confirmed that no one asked about a car they’d hit.

So now what? Over the cost of a new fender or a relatively minor insurance headache, someone who shops among us chose to clam up and not own up to what they did. And remember those pictures I took? Well, copies were given to the Doylestown Borough police department. And I suspect the driver's headache is a tiny bit bigger than what it could've been.

So many lessons, the main of which may be that even if you're not inclined to 'do the right thing,' it's 2012—newsflash, we've all got phones with cameras in our pockets and purses, and we all use them. Whether you’re on the sidewalk, in a store, in a park, or in a parking lot, if you’ve done something that someone feels warrants a picture, there’s a good chance one was taken, especially if you did wrong.

So if being a decent human being isn't in your genetic base code, maybe remembering there's a good chance you're on someone's phone will nudge you in the right direction anyway.

You could also take two seconds and think how you'd wish someone would own up to hitting your car if they'd damaged it while parked.

Or in the alternative, you could just learn how to drive your car.