TheBanyanTree: In The Park Yesterday

[Mike Pingleton]

The woman was ten feet away from where her sidewalk and mine intersected, and 
her two toy fox terriers jumped and strained against the short lead she had 
on them.  One of those retractable leashes, I saw as I got closer, and I 
watched as her thumb, in slow motion it seemed, pressed down to let the leash 
pay out, the little dogs eating up the slack as they ran into the sidewalk 
intersection in front of me.

Nothing for it but to pull hard to the left and leave the sidewalk, but the 
grass was heavy with the morning dew, the tires sliding out from under me and 
the park flying up to meet me on the way down.

My life did not flash before my eyes and there was no slowing down of time - I 
hit the ground with a hard thump.  My helmeted head smacked the ground hard 
enough to send my eyeglasses flying a yard or more, my held breath expelled 
in a grunted cough.  Pain, deep pain in the left elbow, caught underneath me.  
Uh, oh.  No, I don't think it's broken.

I got up, out from under my bicycle, mentally running diagnostics, the 
conscious mind running a systems check through the nervous system.  Nothing 
broken, lots of pain in some toes and ankle and elbow.  "Are you okay?" the 
lady warbles.  I look up, and she's walking up her sidewalk, her back already 
turned to me.  She's at a slow waddle, her feet ensconced in pink bath 
slippers, hers the stiff-legged gait of arthritic knees and poor circulation.  
My anger drains; she didn't see me, wrapped up in her own early morning 
world, or perhaps her mind isn't right.

"Yeah lady, I'm okay."

I am okay.  The sun came up this morning and I with it.  I've got bruised 
ribs, a stiff neck, a swollen ankle and some skin missing from the tips of 
three of my toes, but I'm alive.  Nothing broken.  Nothing to keep me down, 
or stop me.  

It's gonna be a great day.