This evening, at dusk, the MTA bus was working its way south on 9th Avenue. As it approached a bus stop, I saw a few feet away from the stop on the corner was a policeman. As the bus came to a stop and I took a second glance, I saw the policeman had a man beside him, about the same height, probably in his 40’s. The second man had his hands behind his back, because they were in cuffs. All I could wonder was what he had done to be subdued and cuffed, and how that moment before changed his night’s plans. Think about it. One minute he is a free man with manageable arms and after committing something that ended up in his being cuffed, he is no longer able to direct or guide himself. He will now go through a system that treats him like a cog in the machinery. This isn’t about whether he is right or wrong or how the system works, this is just a realization that from the moment of cuffing, his night was going to be unlike his night previously. He was now going to be part of a system over which he had no control. He was now going to be at the mercy of officers and others who do not necessarily see him as an individual. It is at moments like this, I realize what freedom really means. Freedom from being touched if you don’t want to be touched. Freedom to flail your arms if you wish, freedom to run, or skip or hop, or just sit. At the moment of his cuffing his freedom is gone. It stayed with me a long time.