Ask Before `Helping Hand'

To the editors:

We are sorry that Barbara Martinez was scared by someone else's anger ("A Helping Hand Rebuffed" Editorial Notebook, Oct. 22), but perhaps she would consider how she would feel if someone she hadn't seen and didn't know had taken hold of her on the street, without having spoken a single word, much less asked her permission.

We've always considered introductions to be in order before touching another person in non-emergency situations. The entire interaction described in Martinez's article might have gone much more smoothly had the well-meaning gentleman in question offered assistance rather than intruding physically. "Would you like a guide across the street, ma'am?" "May I be of assistance?"

We've known various people classed an disabled, and as the world isn't best-adapted to their needs, they tend to be quite practiced at adapting their behavior--including letting others know when assistance is required. It is possible that Martinez's elementary school class was long on helpfulness but short on other aspects of etiquette. Just as it is good to know the posture with which to guide a blind person across the street, it is good to know how to ask. MICHAEL J. EPSTEIN '00   NYANI-IISHA F. MARTIN '97   CLAUDIA MASTROIANNI '91-'94   NANCY A. SIMS '97   BARBARA A. STROM '99   Oct. 24, 1998