"I'm very sorry for the nice man who was enjoying his McDouble when I ran in bleeding and screaming for the police."
It's only the fifth of January, but that statement might be the quote of the year for 2015, and a few more years to come.
It wasn't said by some comic-book character in a cheesy movie. It was said, apparently, without irony or sarcasm.
In other words, the one who said it is a much, much better person than I am, or probably will be. At least, she did a much better job of embodying the principles of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Mother Teresa or Malala Yousafzai than I ever could.
The person who made that immortal declaration is Samantha Hulsey, a trans woman who grew up in Savannah, Georgia. You might say she was being a gracious young Southern lady in expressing her sorrow for the man munching on a McDouble. But I think there's even more than that behind her espousal of compassion in the midst of her own suffering.
She was with her partner, Rae Raucci, when a man harassed them as they were boarding a bus. "He was saying a lot of hateful things," Hulsey recalled. When she and Raucci got off the bus, the man ran after them and plunged a steak knife with a 3 1/2" blade into Hulsey's chest.
The bus she and Raucci were boarding was the 49 Muni in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco.
Yes, you read that right: San Francisco. Hulsey moved there from Savannah where, she hoped, she could live openly as a woman. In Savannah, , "I was bullied and had things thrown at me," she recalled, "but no one tried to kill me." She, like many others, lived in the City At The End Of The Rainbow with the believing "that sort of thing shouldn't happen here".
Unfortunately, it can happen anywhere. Yes, even in San Francisco. As Otis Redding noted, there are some things about Georgia you can't escape on the dock of the bay.
It's only the fifth of January, but that statement might be the quote of the year for 2015, and a few more years to come.
It wasn't said by some comic-book character in a cheesy movie. It was said, apparently, without irony or sarcasm.
In other words, the one who said it is a much, much better person than I am, or probably will be. At least, she did a much better job of embodying the principles of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Mother Teresa or Malala Yousafzai than I ever could.
The person who made that immortal declaration is Samantha Hulsey, a trans woman who grew up in Savannah, Georgia. You might say she was being a gracious young Southern lady in expressing her sorrow for the man munching on a McDouble. But I think there's even more than that behind her espousal of compassion in the midst of her own suffering.
She was with her partner, Rae Raucci, when a man harassed them as they were boarding a bus. "He was saying a lot of hateful things," Hulsey recalled. When she and Raucci got off the bus, the man ran after them and plunged a steak knife with a 3 1/2" blade into Hulsey's chest.
The bus she and Raucci were boarding was the 49 Muni in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco.
Yes, you read that right: San Francisco. Hulsey moved there from Savannah where, she hoped, she could live openly as a woman. In Savannah, , "I was bullied and had things thrown at me," she recalled, "but no one tried to kill me." She, like many others, lived in the City At The End Of The Rainbow with the believing "that sort of thing shouldn't happen here".
Unfortunately, it can happen anywhere. Yes, even in San Francisco. As Otis Redding noted, there are some things about Georgia you can't escape on the dock of the bay.
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