The Elephant in the Room

             A man stoops over your bed, with the goal to end your life.  Do you do nothing?  Or do you take action?  Personally, I am infatuated with the second option.  Hand me the bedside candle or nearby blunt object.  I will repeatedly beat that killer with the spirit of a CLUE game board character.  But surprisingly, the old man in the short film “The Tell-Tale Heart” adapted by Darrin Walker and Travis Mays defies basic instinct when he follows the first option.   Staying in his bed like a sissy, the old man let his eventual murderer triumph, not even bothering to move his lazy eye towards the darker section of the room.  His ignorance to save his own life reflects the situational irony present in too many human beings—the desire to believe everything will work out on its own, despite blatant evidence that proves otherwise.   Or, in less erudite terms, people do stupid things to avoid confrontation.  The reason for this tendency has a certain inexplicability.  I assume that people want to choose logic, but they fall victim to expectation.  For example, I can remember an uncomfortable experience during my time as a mathematics teaching assistant.  Every week, I worked with a certified teacher and another assistant my age, instructing a class of eight children or so in the fundamentals of mathematics.  One day, one of the kids in my class scraped his hands against a sharp part of his desk.  Blood started spilling out in globs.   Once again, two options soon emerged.   We could all permit the laceration, and face a potential parental lawsuit.  Or we could all allocate aid to the injury, effectively eliminating the conflict at hand.  Choice B, right?  Cue the characteristic wrong-answer-buzzer-sound.  The students around the injured student continued working.  The teacher, a substitute that day, made surreptitious glances toward the injured student, apparently absorbed in the attendance list.  My fellow teaching assistant looked ready to spew projectile vomit.  I sighed.  In a matter of a few minutes, I gathered a first-aid kit, constructed basic bandaging, and solved the medical problem.   Really, not that big of a deal.  So why the struggle of so many individuals to do something about the bleeding student?   The answer lies in the hope that someone else will come to the rescue, or diffusion of responsibility.  The world must understand that assumptions can never fully equate to the truth.  As a person blessed with the gift of realism, I offer the following advice.  If someone attempts to kill you, do your best to stop him and her.  If a young kid gets a cut, hand him or her a band-aid to prevent death by blood loss.  And if any of these scenarios confuse you, larger internal issues need scrutiny.   Simple as that.