CLOSE ONE!
Street Stupids
Cheating the enigma of death
Another in my Amy Sea inspired series, How have you not written about that?
Because we needed to catch a train, my buddy R and I couldn’t stay for the encore — Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations — the concluded the Ukrainian Benefit Concert at Boston Symphony Hall. Having cried my way through Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony I had no reason to feel cheated out of my feels.
As we crossed Huntington Avenue I heard R call out “Whoa!” I looked to my right, that being the side he was walking on, and saw not my good buddy but —
You know the scene where the character gets hit by a car and killed? The one where you see what they saw in their last moment? The speeding car bearing down? That is exactly what I saw. R had already jumped out of the way.
Fortunately, age has not eroded my reflexes too much and the car wasn’t going that far over the speed limit and R’s cry alerted me. That being a less than fortunate number of fortunatelys separating me from death, I suppose I should worry a little more about my personal safety.
If I worried about my personal safety a little more I might not become so engrossed in a conversation about Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations that I step out onto Huntington Avenue on a busy Friday evening and into the path of speeding motor vehicular death. R did it also but I hear my mother’s voice saying “Just because Kenny did it doesn’t mean it isn’t a dumb stupid thing to do!”
The guy — I feel certain it was a guy — was driving too fast for an urban setting on a busy night. The gust of wind I felt as he passed behind me told me that. It also drove home how close I’d come to being dead, or undergoing painful physical therapy as I got used to my nice new titanium bones, or something unthinkably worse.
We laughed ourselves sick over this, like you do, repeating an old saw about children, drunkards, and fools, with special emphasis on the word fools. I was so shaken I tossed a ten dollar bill in the trash, thinking it was an old candy wrapper. That might not seem overly spazzy for an 72-year-old man but it gets worse. I’d looked at it only minutes before and thought, “Oh, I thought this was a candy wrapper, but it’s a tenner. Good thing I didn’t throw it in the trash!”
Not only did I literally throw away money, but I reached through a fence and into the area beyond the subway turnstiles to do so. I called to a stranger on the other side of the fence to help me but he hurried away, obviously thinking me an utter lunatic. Fortunately, it was late enough that I didn’t have to work my way down the line of ticket vending machines to find one that worked. The gates were open.
When I returned from retrieving my prize R and a small group of subway workers were yucking it up. I can’t be mad. Had our roles been reversed I would have done the same.
We made our way to the commuter rail platform. All the way back on the train I could not get the image of that car out of my head. R, who is a couple of years older than I, slept most of the way. I wonder if he dreamt of it.
Thank you for your savvy editing and for the prompt, Gary Chapin!
If you liked this, or even if you didn’t, in fact especially if you didn’t, check out some of my other funny stories on MuddyUm. You might like them.
Want more laughter in your life?
