just now remembering this. like full stop i don't think i've thought anything of this experience since a few days after it happened.

but more than a year ago. i was taking a bus from malaga to granada and one of the station employees came up to me (i was the last person in line to board the bus at this moment) and ask me if i could help out this gentleman (the station man's words precisely, he called him caballero) he was leading with him. and it was immediately evident that this guy was visually impaired or blind.

and well. i was like 'yeah of course' because yeah of course.

and i did, sort of. but i wasn't sure like, how far was too far. with helping. so i only helped minimally. and also i didn't immediately fess up that i didn't speak spanish natively, in fact i don't think i mentioned it at all. (maybe i said i was a student? i can't recall). which i should have said immediately so that he understood that if i said something wrong or weird, it wasn't me getting impatient with him or exasperated over assisting but simply low confidence in my imperfect linguistic grasp (and just overall low confidence, generally, extensively, but nevertheless). or so that i could have asked somebody else to help if he didn't feel comfortable with me and my incompetent ass, which would have been totally fair. i probably should have said that from the get go, really, but it felt like it might have come off as me trying to brush off the task and trying to make excuses to get out of it. yeeeeah, so the two of us basically stood there in silence except when i had to give verbal directions for like "walk forward" "stop" "there's stairs" etc. which were overall pretty stilted, i think.

also, he got off the bus just fine but then i wasn't sure if he wanted help from there, so i let him alone. i'm sure he could have gotten out of the building without issue eventually, but it was taking him a bit of time with the layout, to find the door from the bus stall, whatnot, and everyone was giving him weird looks. which really just rubbed me the wrong way, so after maybe 15 or 30 seconds, i did go up to him and offer to assist him again. so i got him to the taxi area and into a taxi, if i'm remembering the events correctly.

simultaneously a nice experience and a super humiliating one. because like i am literally so👏 dumb👏 and i think way too much but i thought if i said something about not speaking spanish super fluently that i would get in trouble or something. so instead i probably made him feel terrible and was like suuuuuper awkward about helping him. like bitch, if you don't know, just ask what he wants you to do to help, holy fuck.

now i know better, but i would go back and slap myself right in the face if i had the chance.