We’ve all been there.
Either your commute is too long or you’re just dog-tired from work or school, but falling asleep on the train is one of those things that just happens.
And when the young fellow in the black jacket did just that on a Q Train in NYC, dropping his head on the shoulder of Isaac Theil, the unthinkable happened.
Theil didn’t do a thing. He just sat there, letting the stranger catch his Z’s. Now, that’s not very New York at all.
“I simply remembered the times my own head would bop on someone’s shoulder because I was so tired after a long day,” he recounted to Tova Ross of Tablet Magazine.
A subway rider, obviously as shocked as we are, snapped the picture above and posted it on Reddit, where it warmed the hearts of thousands and was shared just as many times.
Redditor Braffination wrote, “Heading home on the Q train yesterday when this young black guy nods off on the shoulder of a Jewish man. The man doesn’t move a muscle, just lets him stay there. After a minute, I asked the man if he wanted me to wake the kid up, but he shook his head and responded, ‘He must have had a long day, let him sleep. We’ve all been there, right?'”
The only one not totally surprised by the act of kindness is Theil himself.
“Maybe the photo wouldn’t have become so popular if people weren’t seeing a Jewish man with a yarmulke and a black man in a hood, and because they might not necessarily correlate the two,” speculated Theil to Tablet. “But there is only one reason that I didn’t move, and let him continue sleeping, and that has nothing to do with race. He was simply a human being who was exhausted, and I knew it and happened to be there and have a big shoulder to offer him.”
Okay, Theil for president? How’s that for a restoration of faith in the human race!
SOURCE: Huffington Post, TabletMag | PHOTO CREDIT: Reddit
