He didn’t talk to them, nor did he speak during the whole encounter, but the smile was back.

This is the America I know and love and which I see so rarely reported in the mainstream media.

From Neapolitan by Baldilocks.

When I was a child, one of my greatest fears was being lost and separated from home and from my parents. For that reason, this real-life vignette got to me.

This past Friday, my friend and I were out running errands and we stopped by a gas station to fuel up. As my friend pulled up to the pump, he narrowly missed a rail-thin man who had walked right in front of his truck.

“Watch out, crack-head,” I said.

“No,” Todd countered. “That man is retarded. Down Syndrome, maybe.”

I gave the man a closer look and so it was. He had malformed ears and a slightly misshapen head. He was of either Korean or Chinese descent -- something which made him stand out in the area where the gas station is located.

His complexion and eyes were clear; he had an innocent smile on his face and a barely-healed gash on his right arm. He was no more than thirty years old. I watched as he headed toward the entrance to the gas station’s store, and then forgot about him for a minute.

As Todd went to pay for the gas, I sat in the truck and, like nearly everyone else in the First World, I picked up my phone to read my email and surf the Internet. But something told me to put the phone down.

I did and glanced toward the store entrance right at the moment when the store’s manager/owner -- either Middle-Eastern or Indian -- was pushing the young man out of the door. The smile was gone and the young man was resisting.

I could see Todd standing in line while watching the commotion. I steeled myself because I know that my friend has great empathy for beings weaker than himself, and that he isn’t shy about intervening to help said beings when they are being hurt. I got out of the truck.

As I headed toward the entrance, I could hear some of the other patrons saying things like, “Leave him alone,” “Stop fighting him; he doesn’t know any better,” “He’s retarded.”

Then a couple of patrons -- an older black man and a young Hispanic woman -- lead the man away from the store. They talked to him and comforted him as they kept him among the pumps and out of the way of approaching cars. He didn’t talk to them, nor did he speak during the whole encounter, but the smile was back.

Click through to read the whole story. There's more.

I see this everyday. Americans trying to prevent injustice. Americans shielding and helping those unable to help themselves. Americans treating one another as individuals to be judged on their actions not as masks of identity.

I wish our mainstream media and Mandarin Class could see this America as well, rather than the evil distortion they have conjured in their own minds.