Man Down! Man Down!

You know how when you first got your driver's license, your mother told you that "you are never in too much of a hurry to get into an accident". Well, today I discovered that the same goes for being a pedestrian.

As any normal New Yorker, I wait for light to change half way in the middle of the street, I cross against the red hand if I feel I can safely make it in time, and going to a cross walk is sometimes really out of my way. Well, this morning I was making a mad dash to the train way far uptown (it is no secret in this city that some neighborhoods get much more love than others...just compare Park Avenue to, let's say 225th Street). I am usually quite quick and lithe when crossing, and as a bonus I was wearing flats today. Well, I was watching the traffic instead of where I was stepping and planted my foot right on the side of a pot hole. Man Down! Man Down! Terror, adrenaline, and embarrassment suddenly overtook my entire body. All I could think of was the bus and car coming towards me and I don't think I have ever scrambled so fast in my life to get out of that intersection.

It scared the shit out of me more than anything else, and thank God I escaped relatively unscathed. I did, however, tear my favorite jeans at the knee, my foot hurts, and I could possibly still have a little bit of Broadway stuck in my hand. The train I almost died over ended up being late, the raspberries I brought for breakfast are more on the pureed side, and I had to continue onto the train with people I see every day with a very bruised ego. I am lucky....it could have been so much worse. You gotta learn your lessons, then make lemonade out of the lemons: There will always be another train, and now I get to make cute cut-off bermudas.