I'm walking down the street. Sunny day. Saturday. Greg at my side, Stewart attached to the leash attached to my arm. Coffee in hand. We are having a pleasant stroll. The air is nice. It smells like when school is about to start. We stop and chat with the 'someone' we ALWAYS run into when we are out walking the dog. I like to tease Greg about this. We live in a spot in Manhattan that everyone seems to visit on a regular basis and Greg knows a lot of these people. Before I lived here I visited the area mostly for Happy Hours.
We continue West toward the water. We are thinking of going to the park or the dog run. Stewart is thinking about what that tree smells like. I'm not sure why, but we are either walking slowly or have just stopped for a moment. Just the three of us, our little family, on a fairly empty street.
We hear a loud cracking sound over our heads as if a large tree branch is beginning to fall. Neither Greg nor I look up. We simply pause and as we see and feel debris falling around us we slowly crouch down into our own separate fetal positions. Looking back, we now laugh that is was not instinct for either of us to protect each other or the dog. We didn't even think far enough to see what was falling. We just went down.
We hear a lot of screaming and yelling from afar. Something slams on my head. I peek up and see a brick crash and crumble on the ground. We hear a woman yell, "RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN!", we wait a minute and then we do. We bolt across the street and look back at what everyone else who has come out of their apartment, stopped his jogging, pulled over, stuck her head out of the window or jumped out of the van for....
The top of the brick facade of the building we were standing directly under just came off the building. Fell off the building. Came unstuck, unglued, uncemented, peeled off and forward and came crashing down all around us. Around us. How did we survive this?? Except for a couple of scrapes and a bruise on Greg, a minor bump on my noggin...and a bloody paw...[poor little guy]... we realized that our slow, INSTINCTual reactions probably saved our lives. Had we actually "RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! etc..." we would have surely been killed.
We were standing directly under the ladder to the fire escape.
The police came and gave us some paperwork. We headed back home to call our parents. Instinct. We stayed in and watched a movie that night. Now there is scaffolding in front of the place and this morning when I started to jog under it I pulled to the right and Stewart and I ran on the other side of the street. Boycott.
Believe it or not [if you do, it could explain a lot about how I think], this is the second time I've been walking in this city and a piece of a building fell off and hit me on the head. The first time was much more frightening as I was by myself and I was knocked out. When I came to, I was standing in the center of a ring of Asian construction workers and for a good 15 seconds I had no idea where I was or how I'd gotten there. I burst into tears and they stood there silently staring at me. I busted through them Red Rover style and went into the building that attacked me. Not a single soul spoke English nor was interested in assisting me.
I'm not sure I would have helped me either. Not in this city. I was crying and yelling at anyone who would listen. I calmed down when I realized the hilarity of my behavior and that I was actually just fine. I walked out the door...and called my mom. Instinct.
So, here I am on my lunch hour feeling overwhelmed with the urge to share this with the world. Especially after I get an email from a dear friend I haven't seen in years. She sent me a picture of her new babies. I got teary over their cuteness.
I'm 35. I get choked up over anything newly born. Instinct.
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