The Avenue

Artful jaywalking

It was in late winter when the accident occurred. From the window in his fourth floor apartment he could see the very spot where it had happened. He was merely walking to the market that was one block away. The sidewalk had been icy that day.

There was a four-lane avenue between him and the market. Most people would walk to the very end of the block to cross the busy avenue at the intersection where there was a crosswalk and electronic ‘Walk’ and ‘Don’t Walk’ signals. But he never did that. He crossed the wide avenue somewhere in the middle of the block.

He was forever grateful that his accident did not occur while crossing the avenue and did not involve being hit by a car. He was simply walking down the sidewalk repeatedly peering over his shoulder looking for a break in traffic so that he could cross the street.

He had not walked far when he saw a break and turned to cross the street and that is when he slipped on a patch of ice on the sidewalk and went flying through the air. As he fell on the hard sidewalk he broke his left leg, his right arm and he suffered a mild concussion. To him, it seemed almost as bad as if he had been hit by a car.

It was in spring that he spent a great deal of time at his window staring down at the sidewalk where he met his icy fate. He was on sick leave from his job and had little else to do. The flowers in the landscaping alongside the sidewalk were blooming and the trees were turning green. Opening his window he could hear the chirping of birds and the sound of traffic on the avenue.

A lot of people walked back and forth along that sidewalk during the course of the day but there were two men that always caught his attention.

One was an old ragged homeless man who was always pushing a shopping cart. He was short and always hunched over, leaning on the shopping cart for support, his gaze always looking down at his feet. He had a long white beard and wore a tattered baseball cap and a dirty army coat. Every morning he would appear from the left pushing his cart to the right. In the mid-afternoon he would appear from the right pushing his cart, which was now full of aluminum cans, down the sidewalk to the left.

One afternoon the old homeless man was pushing his full cart down the sidewalk when he pushed it right into a street lamp. With seemingly great effort, he straightened out enough to see what he had hit. He moved his cart around the street lamp then continued down the sidewalk, his gaze once again returning to the ground at his feet.

The other man he noticed was a tall, well-dressed and well-groomed business man. His posture was very straight and he seemed to walk with great ease. He always managed to cross the avenue without ever breaking stride, the traffic always providing him with an opening to do so.

Watching this tall man from his window, he grew envious. When crossing the avenue before the accident he often would rush to the turn lane in the middle of the avenue then have to wait for traffic coming from the other direction to clear before he could finish crossing the avenue. Almost never was he able to just walk all the way across without breaking stride.

It was as spring was turning into summer that he stood one day at his window sipping his coffee. He was very excited on this day for he had a doctor’s appointment later in the day to have the casts on his arm and leg taken off. His adult son had been driving him to the market to do his shopping and he was eager to be able to do it on his own again. He wanted his mobility and freedom back.

And he was very eager to once again cross that avenue. He knew that he would never do it the same again. It would now surely be a very different experience.

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