I started by day today by almost dying.
Sure, I’m usually full of amusing hijinks on how I nearly maimed/injued/killed myself, but today was actually quite sobering, and a little scary.
I was walking out of my building to the subway, which is less than 1/10th a block from the entrance to my building. It takes me longer to get into the subway than it does to get to the entrance stairs.
This enormously rotund woman wheeling double suitcases comes up to me and starts asking me questions. I pop off my earphones, and calmly direct her to the 4/5 train. It kind of amazes me, how many people ask me for directions, when there are so many other likely culprits about. I know part of it is eye contact. I am always mentally thumbnail sketching people as I walk around, and part of that is trying to take in maximum information in minimum time. I think tourists from niceville mistake that for caring.
Anyway, I give the trudleasaurus her directions, and step out of her way, so I can get by her, and into the normal flow of rapid pedestrian traffic streaming towards the train. I make it maybe four feet, and something which sounded like an M80 going off behind me had me jumping, and spinning halfway around midair. The first thing that went through my head was that it was a package bomb or something, and that there might be more coming around. Instead, I saw a picture frame.
Maybe three feet behind me was a very large picture frame, with solid back-matting, all in black, probably 2′ by 3′. It was one of those multi-picture mat/frame things – it had a bunch of seperate “windows” for pictures, all of which were filled up. The noise, apparently, was when it fell/was thrown out someone’s window, and landed just behind me, face down. This guy right next to me asked me if I was O.K., which I was, bnut I was a little surprised/shaken. He picked up the frame,and it left behind a large rectangle of powdered glass. After showing me the frame, and asking me what he thought he should do with it, I told him to toss it in the garbage, a few feet away. He decided he was going to take it into my lobby, and explain the situation to the doormen – hopefully they could do something about the glass.
It was a surreal train ride – so many things were rushing through my head, not the least of which was if I had paused to re-set my music, isntead of getting aroudn the woman with the bags, I would have probably worn that frame like a helmet, most likely to disastrous effect. How many times a day do we sneak past death, and how many times a day does she grin and bear it, knowing eventually happenstance will work in her favor?
I will shamelessly add that I totally clocked someone with my bag, and nearly knocked them down the stairs in the initial surprise and jump-spinning bit, but they caught the bannister. I bet her livejournal reads “I almost got knocked down the stairs by some giant moron with a ponytail…”
ETA: When I came in the building tonight, I asked the doorman if anyone claimed the picture. He still had it behind the desk, and I took another look at it. This is what it most closely resembles – he wouldn’t let me take a picture of it. Nobody has come to claim it, but he said he recognised one of the people in the pictures, so he assuimed eventually it would be claimed. I asked him to tell me what floor the guy lived on when he fouind out.
ETA2: It was a she, not a he who claimed it, from the nineteenth floor. If we figure that fucker was 5-6lb. with glass in, and it fell between 180-190 feet, it would ahve done some serious damage on impact (I feel like there is a Physics Midterm Problem in there somewhere).
