Last Thursday, I was running to catch a train, and I slipped at the top of an 18-step flight of stairs, causing my feet to fly backwards as my upper body lurched forward, like a cartoon. The next thing I knew, I was sliding and bumping down the stairs, head-first, until I reached the bottom, where I laid in shock for several seconds and tried to determine if I'd cracked my head open or knocked out any teeth. My head and shoulders were on the subway platform, my legs still splayed out on the metal-edged stairs.

Once I'd oriented myself and confirmed that my head was OK, I opened my eyes to an upside-down subway platform with numerous people on it. No one said or did a thing.

Still in shock, I yelled out, "Oh, I'm fine! Thanks everyone for asking!" I must have looked ridiculous, but I know that I did not look drunk or homeless: It was the middle of the afternoon and I was wearing a nice sport coat and carrying a leather briefcase.

But what if I had been drunk or homeless? People would have stepped over and ignored me just as quickly, and that would have been deemed acceptable (if unethical). Depending on the day, I would do the same -- I certainly have in the past -- and I doubt that many of us can say different. Who stops to help every person they see who obviously needs it? The fact that I was neither drunk nor homeless only underscored a sad fact of public life: We're all on our own, even those of us who can't be written off, however unjustly, as social pariahs.

That afternoon, I posted my fall as a Facebook status update and included the bit about no one helping me. Within hours, I'd received several accounts of similar misfortune, met with equal apathy from bystanders. One friend said he did knock out his front teeth in such a subway fall, and no one said a word.

But contrary to what my parents back in Illinois may think, apathy is not a "New York thing." My sister-in-law posted a comment to my update about the time she saw an elderly woman fall across the street, and she was the first person to reach her -- not the closest. That was in a small town in Wisconsin.

Another friend wrote that when she was pregnant with her second child, she accidentally locked her toddler daughter in the car on a busy street in Providence, Rhode Island. "I was hysterical and screaming like a lunatic through the window at her to sit forward and pull up the door lock," she wrote. "At least 15 people passed and didn't help. I was a crazy, hugely pregnant maniac. Oh, by the way, I was parked in front of a church..."

The problem of apathy in America generally focuses on politics and social justice. Many Americans simply don't involve themselves with the issues that threaten to hurt or weaken society, despite being part of that society themselves. People litter, fail to vote, ignore others in need. But something happens when you experience apathy first-hand: you wake up a bit.

The day after my fall, I was walking up the stairs of another subway station when a man beside me tripped and fell forward. I immediately asked if he was OK, which clearly took him by surprise. A few days earlier, I must admit, I can't say I'd have bothered. Fortunately, he was fine.

If you'd like to learn from my lesson and help those less fortunate that yourself (without falling down the stairs first) visit VolunteerMatch, presented by Kenneth Cole.

[Image: Edvard Munch's "The Scream"]