Scrambling up the worn track through the weeds, ducking to avoid spiky branches, swinging left leg then right over the guard rail, quickly glancing downroad to see coming traffic, and across the paving stone median to see if the uproad traffic has the green light, I rush to the center, get waved on, surge forward, then catch my foot on a ripple in the asphalt and stumble in front of a line of trucks and cars.
This 'extreme jaywalking' I do because, well, it's convenient, but when I looked up yesterday at the vehicles bearing steadily down on me, I found myself falling and hopping forward at the same time, heavy bag slipping off my back to hang under my neck, my right leg, already tender, stretching at angles and under loads far beyond familiar. 'Let me not hit the ground,' I prayed.
I don't know how I managed to lurch to the other side just as the traffic zoomed by behind me. Feeling foolish, I wondered how things had gone so wrong so quickly. My right leg felt abused, perhaps torn, certainly painful. I continued my journey, limping over the bridge to the college and my car. Oh, the deep ache in my thigh meat. I must have really damaged something--what? muscles, joints surely.
In the course of the evening's class, the pain subsided, and even more as I slept (after ibuprofen); even today, leading a walking tour, there was no flare-up, no revived discomfort.
Why do I find this fascinating? (Fascinating: what I can't look away from or stop looking back at.) The suddenness and intensity of the event must have meant disaster, and I was fatalistic about the inevitable (and well-deserved) consequences I'd suffer. There would be a price, I was sure--and yet there wasn't. I was given a pardon. My leg must have been more resilient than I thought.
It's wonderful but baffling. I'll be more careful next time but there's perhaps another lesson: the plenitude of things and stuff hides more possibilities than we know--for good as well as woe.
This 'extreme jaywalking' I do because, well, it's convenient, but when I looked up yesterday at the vehicles bearing steadily down on me, I found myself falling and hopping forward at the same time, heavy bag slipping off my back to hang under my neck, my right leg, already tender, stretching at angles and under loads far beyond familiar. 'Let me not hit the ground,' I prayed.
I don't know how I managed to lurch to the other side just as the traffic zoomed by behind me. Feeling foolish, I wondered how things had gone so wrong so quickly. My right leg felt abused, perhaps torn, certainly painful. I continued my journey, limping over the bridge to the college and my car. Oh, the deep ache in my thigh meat. I must have really damaged something--what? muscles, joints surely.
In the course of the evening's class, the pain subsided, and even more as I slept (after ibuprofen); even today, leading a walking tour, there was no flare-up, no revived discomfort.
Why do I find this fascinating? (Fascinating: what I can't look away from or stop looking back at.) The suddenness and intensity of the event must have meant disaster, and I was fatalistic about the inevitable (and well-deserved) consequences I'd suffer. There would be a price, I was sure--and yet there wasn't. I was given a pardon. My leg must have been more resilient than I thought.
It's wonderful but baffling. I'll be more careful next time but there's perhaps another lesson: the plenitude of things and stuff hides more possibilities than we know--for good as well as woe.
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