Wednesday, January 13, 2010

A little perspective please...

All it ever does is rain in this damn city. Murphy’s law would of course apply when I say my umbrella was sitting safely in my bottom desk drawer. I wasn’t thrilled with the weather, but I had better things to worry about than the rain. I had an interview to get to, one that might just change the course of my life. Taking the shortcut though, that is the moment that changed my life.

You know those moments that you replay in your head over and over, what if you had thought things through before jumping head first into unforeseeable consequences…before jumping headfirst into oncoming traffic?

It truly happened in slow motion. The light turned red, the expensive sports car careening out of control, the eyes of the prissy, manicured woman at the wheel-wide with terror as just moments before she was probably wondering what her live-in cook would make for dinner as she hurried from yoga class to pick up the kids from their expensive nursery school. The light had been red ever since she turned onto Maplewood Drive. Aren’t we all preoccupied? Don’t we all have really important things to do? Did she even consider her actions would affect the lives of other people? Or are the other people just insignificant to her, her money being most important of course, people like that really make me angry.

I don’t know why I didn’t think about what would happen. I saw the soccer ball roll into the street. I heard the squeal of tires. I screamed for the child to stop chasing the ball, and when he didn’t my body moved by itself as if possessed by some unearthly force. I don’t even like kids. The last thing I remember is the look in that lady’s eyes, that and seeing the little boy standing safely on the curb, looking at the blood.

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