Insignificance

This past Friday, the 20th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, NPR's Morning Edition featured an interview with the brother of Ron McNair, the African-American astronaut killed in the tragedy. One part of it stuck with me, and keeps, well, sticking into me:

Mr. CARL MCNAIR: When he was nine years old, Ron, without my parents or myself knowing his whereabouts, decided to take a mile walk from our home [in South Carolina] down to the library, which was, of course, a public library, but not so public for blacks folks when you're talking about 1959. So as he was walking in there, all these folks were staring at him because they were white folk only. And they were looking at him, saying, you know, who is this Negro?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MCNAIR: So he politely positioned himself in line to check out his books.
Well, this old librarian, she says, this library is not for coloreds. He said, well, I would like to check out these books. She says, young man, if you don't leave this library right now, I'm going to call the police.
So he just propped himself up on the counter and sat there and said, I'll wait.
So she called the police and subsequently called my mother. The police came down, two burly guys come and say, well, where's the disturbance? And she pointed to the little nine-year-old boy sitting up on the counter.
And he says, ma'am, what's the problem?
So my mother - she comes down there praying the whole way there: Lordy, Jesus, please don't let them put my child in jail. And my mother asks the librarian, what's the problem?
Well, he wanted to check out the books, and you know your son shouldn't be down here.
And the police officer said, why don't you just give the kid the books?
And my mother said, he'll take good care of them.
And reluctantly the librarian gave Ron the books. And my mother said, what do you say?
He said, thank you, ma'am.
(Soundbite of laughter)

What strikes me, what bowls me over, is not the librarian trying to deny young Ron the book. Nothing surprising there, not in South Carolina in 1959. The surprise is the cop, that nameless police officer, whose ordinary yet extraordinary action Carl McNair passes over without a pause. What was he doing, that cop? What was he thinking? "Why don't you just give the kid the books?" The black kid? In 1959? In South Carolina? With the civil rights movement heating up and white paranoia boiling over? Did his fellow police officer look at him in astonishment or confront him once they got back in the squad car, maybe call him an n-lover? Did he think about it, wonder about it later? Or was it, for him, just one insignificant moment in one insignificant day?

How many lives do I help make or break, during all the insignificant moments of my insignificant days?