However, about a year and a half ago I was driving to university when I was forced to stop by an Aboriginal woman standing in the middle of the road. I lived in a known ‘dodgy’ area, filled with Homeswest housing and literally one street number away from a train station. It wasn’t somewhere I’d go running at night. Anyway, I stopped and the woman came to my driver’s side window. At this point I could have driven off, she was no longer in my way. But the guilt drilled into me during high school social studies made me stop and wind my window down. In a very frail voice she asked me to help her. Not with money or anything, just help. I’m sorry, I said. I can’t. I can’t help you. She accepted this with an expression that said she knew this was going to be the answer before she even asked. An expression halfway between dignity and being totally lost. I felt horrible about it for a day or two afterwards, but at the time I didn’t know what to do. Should I have taken her to a police station? Should I have given her money even though she didn’t ask for it? Should I have called an ambulance? Any of those things might have been the wrong thing to do, but at least they would’ve been something. Instead I was caught up in my ‘white fella’ guilt and I drove away. And, hah! I was even so selfish as to write a poem about it within a week. What a dick.