Ignore this post. I’m trying to purge a regret.

It was 1975, Christmastime. I was a first year student at a private liberal arts college in Indiana, where I had a free ride. Picture a typical 18 year old who has been singled out with privilege, a lucky white boy with a bright future in front of him.

My parents had bought me a ticket to fly home for Christmas — maybe they missed me, too. I happily got on the plane to head home, when my luck ran out. Seattle was thoroughly fogged in, a problem that cropped up now and then, but in 1975, the fog was particularly thick, and it would end up closing SeaTac for about a week.

We landed at O’Hare, and my connecting flight was cancelled. That wasn’t so bad, I recall staying up all night flying paper airplanes in the vast empty spaces in the airport. The next day was mostly tiresome — the airline made us reboard a plane and sit there, just in case our destination was cleared, which it wasn’t. We finally disembarked. You may not be used to this, but in the 1970s the airlines were obligated to take care of their passengers, and we got put up in hotels for free, and they handed out meal vouchers that we could use at any restaurant, not just the ones in the airport. I was eating luxurious meals at no cost to myself.

The next day they tried something different: we boarded the plane, we sat for a few hours, and then they finally took off, aiming for Seattle, but when we got closer, the pilot concluded that we couldn’t safely land at our destination, so we were re-routed to San Francisco. We all got more free hotel reservations and fistfuls of meal vouchers, so we got to spend a couple of days in SF at the airline’s expense. I was put up in a hotel near the City Lights bookstore, so every day was an adventure.

I know, this sounds like a sweet deal. Where’s the regret?

There was one brief moment that haunts me. I left my hotel for a walk, when I heard a commotion behind me, from a group of about a dozen people who were clustered around something on the sidewalk, jeering and laughing. I had to push through and see…

An old woman, naked, shuffling around in a circle around her discarded clothes, looking uncomprehendingly at the crowd pointing at her. She was filthy; what struck me the most was that her feet were black and caked with dirt, and her toenails were long and twisted like corkscrews. She may have been drunk, or mentally ill, or just the victim of poverty. I was horrified by her condition and the taunting of the bystanders. This poor woman — I wondered how she was brought so low, did she have a family, were there moments of beauty and joy in her life that we can’t see here?

So what did I do? Here’s the regret.

I walked away.

I’ve felt terrible about that ever since. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night wondering what I could have, should have done. Whenever I wonder whether I’m actually a good person (as we all do) this is the moment rises up in my memory. I’ve had people tell me I’m a good person, and I hesitate to respond, because all I can think of are those long blackened toenails. It’s a good thing I’m an atheist, because I can imagine St Peter pointing a bony damning digit at this entry in the book of my life, or Anubis tut-tutting at the imbalance in his scales, and either of them throwing me into a pit. I know I will never shed this feeling of guilt.

Now I write it down, because I should be judged for my behavior.

It’s been over 50 years. I will not forget that woman, or my moment of neglect. When I pass by a homeless person, I’ll throw a few dollars into their hat, but that will never be enough.