I got sprung from work early due to low call volume.


Sweet, right?

I bum a ride home and she lets me off at Broadway, which is a major intersection in Kingston, and I have to cross the intersection and then to the other side of Henry street to get to my apartment. All-in-all a two minute walk if the lights are against me.

They weren't.

So I start across Henry/O'Neil (for some reason, when you cross Broadway, Henry becomes O'Neil and vice versa, depending on the direction you're walking in) first, meaning to then cross to the other corner of Broadway.

There's no traffic waiting on O'Neil to either turn onto Broadway or drive down Henry. Traffic is whizzing by on Broadway. For once, I'm actually looking where the fuck I'm going because suburbanites and rubes drive like they have no goddamn sense whatsoever, seemingly happy to mow down any pedestrian unfortunate enough to be in their path.

This big ass, Canyonero of an SUV, black with chrome accents, without slowing down, swings into the turn before I'm even halfway across the street and before he's even in the proper lane.

In other words he would have been driving straight down the middle of O'Neil, and head on into any car waiting to drive up Henry Street.

But there were no cars, just me; maybe one third of the way across O'Neil, and the only reason I'm not FUCKING DEAD is because for once I wasn't a million miles away. I was looking both ways, and I see the fucking Canyonero bearing down on me like certain, shiny Doom. I'm mid-step as he swings into the turn, and I see him see me, see his eyes widen as (I hope) he tries to correct his near-disastrous turn. He still isn't trying to slow down.

I've frozen, still mid-step, uncertain if I should try to dash across the street because he's SO FUCKING CLOSE to me, still in the oncoming lane of O'Neil traffic, or scrambling back toward the relatively close curb. Either way's looking like a good day to die, and I'm not fleet of foot on the best days, which today definitely was not.

I see his eyes, still wide, that his hair is dark, and he's wearing a black and white NY Yankees baseball cap (nearly mowed down by a fucking Yanks fan? The indignity. If I made it up to heaven, all the other Mets fans would kick my ass) and that he's Hispanic. Fairly young.

I can see . . . not my life flashing before my eyes--frankly nothing I've ever done is, to my mind, particularly worth remembering in a moment of death--instead I see just pain and death. I see the read and white of my blood and bone on the grille, hood and windshield of the Canyonero.

I see my soul or consciousness or whatever fuck you wanna call it knocked instantly out of my body, if I'm lucky. Me broken beyond repair, yet still clinging to some awful, vegetative half-life if I'm not.

I see I'm starting to fall forward, because I still haven't put my left foot down either way. And I instinctively pinwheel my arms so that I fall backwards and to my right.

I can see the wide 'O' of his mouth as he keeps driving by, somehow missing me by several feet, heading toward something approaching the correct lane for the direction he was going.

He still hasn't slowed down.

I'm on the ground. The contents of my jacket have exploded out of the pockets, and my backpack is on the dirty macadam a yard away.

I watch the Canyonero disappear. I know I should be trying to see the license plate, but I'm too shaken and not wearing my glasses. A good thing, or they'd have been broken.

I scramble to my feet, looking around to see if anyone saw, possibly got the license plate of the Rolling SUV of Death.

No one. At least not on first glance. And I'm still in the middle off oncoming traffic from down O'Neil.

So I gather up as much of my change as I dare, and my backpack and mp3 player. My wrist and hip hurt, the ones I landed on.

I finish crossing the street. Wait for the light on Broadway to change. When it does, I cross the street. Some guy crossing in my direction smiles at me and I gape at him. He had to have witnessed my near-life experience. He should've been either asking me if I was okay, or pretending he hadn't seen it, like any other citizen. If I wasn't so ramskazzled, I probably would've swung on him for that fucking smile.

My hands were still shaking after I got home. Shaking while I simultaneously stripped down to shower and paid my cable bill over the phone.

After my shower, I scrubbed down my tower, keyboard, mouse, speakers, desk and some pens with a lethal payload of Fantastik.

I'll probably watch GoF, while I work on my fire_fic.

It's just--what makes me mad, besides the fact some dingleberry Driver's Ed instructor passed this clown, and that one day, said clown's reckless, careless, murderous driving will someday kill someone, is the fact that when he gets home to his retarded ass family or friends, he's gonna be all "you know what happened to me, just now? This stupid girl wasn't looking where she was going and practically jumped in front of my ride. Can you believe that shit? If I wasn't such a good driver, man, she'd be dead."

The thought of him saying that, and believing that he somehow kept me from getting myself silly, inattentive self scragged--cuz, ya know, I was only looking both ways, obeying pedestrian safety laws and common sense, while he was speeding heedlessly into an intersection like the hounds of hell were after him--the mere though of him thinking he's the fucking hero of my life story makes me so. . . .

The moment of rage I felt at realizing that would be exactly what he told people, if he told anyone at all, seemed so focused and powerful. Like it should've burst a blood vessel in what passes for his brain the moment I felt it.

There's irony, I guess, in a born and bred jaywalker like me--I'm a NYC kid, whaddaya expect?--to have never had a near-life experience of the hit-and-run variety before moving to the boonies. Only to have this happen. And I've been hit by a car before. Becaase I was jaywalking while my mind was a million miles away, I literally stepped in front of a car that had the right of way. It was totally my fault. But it was also almost gridlock traffic, and he wasn't driving that fast. He didn't even knock me down, only bruised my leg up a bit.

I wasn't even particularly shaken (the driver seemed way more upset). I'd actually forgotten about it once my leg let up a few days later.

But this.

I rarely jaywalk outside of NYC, and never at this intersection. That's a good way to get killed. I've lived here for two years. I know this. I did everything right and I still could've died tonight because that idiot didn't want to be late for whatever.

I should be more upset, I guess. But I'm not even angry, anymore. Mostly, I'm brain-storming a story based very loosely on that three-second event: one person who lives two lives at the same time. A life where they survived a hit and run, and the long road back from being comatose, and being broken almost beyond repair. The other where they narrowly avoided all that and, as a result, live life like they're indestructible. The story would take up at that three second interval where the two lives diverge.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and if nothing else, nearly getting street-pizza'ed was certainly inspiring.

Still . . . I could go the rest of my life without ever experiencing that again.

Saturday: Grocery shopping, laundry, writing.
Sunday: Beowulf with the movie group.
Monday: Another dentist appointment before work.

I guess I couldn't very well die; look at all the shit I still have to do.