Just left New York City and I wanted to tell you about an incident I had there last month that I found hilarious, probably because I’m a very twisted person. I was walking to the train station with my girlfriend and came to an intersection. I tried to tell her to cross 7th Avenue because we had the walk signal so I said, “I’d cross now.” She didn’t hear me so I shouted, “You should cross now!” She heard me this time but she wasn’t the only one. An old blind man was waiting at the intersection near us, except he was facing traffic. Cars and trucks were whizzing past him at high speed. He titled his head and grumbled, “I should cross?” Luckily, I was paying attention and as I walked away I yelled, “Not you, Sir! I was talking to my girlfriend!” Good thing too, because if he took one step off that curb he would have been crushed.
I started laughing before I could even get the words “I almost killed that guy” out of my mouth. My sense of humor has a tenancy to trump my sense of decency every so often. The thought of giving that old man horribly bad advice and causing him to be knocked into the stratosphere became intensely funny. I immediately pictured making the cover of the New York Post but not in a good way. They’d probably put my picture next to a headline reading ‘Upstate Jerk Causes Blind Man’s Death’.
Let’s be careful out there,
Matt