Vehicular Homicide and Other Things I Try to Avoid

I was almost hit by a bike in Verona.

Well, bikes in the plural, really. The bikers would ring these little bells to warn me and my brain would be all, "Oh, a little bell. That's nice" never equating the sound with DANGER. After a couple times of my almost getting hit this girl in the group gave herself the specific assignment of yelling "AWKWARD MORMON GIRL!" every time a bike bore down on me. That got my attention.

Barely.

Then there was the time my family was in a Twenty-Fourth of July parade. We all wore pioneer clothes. Dad pulled a handcart with Little Sister and Baby Sister inside. Mom and Older Sister and I walked.

I was so excited by the experience, waving at the crowds and making my cloth doll wave too, that I wasn't paying attention. I stepped in the handcart's path. Dad pulled it over my foot.
Mom rushed to my aid. She was convinced I was maimed. (I wasn't.) She was swearing up and down and all around. Of course, the stake president was sitting with his family on that particular stretch of street.

Things got awkward.



The Beatles, crossing the street with
grace, speed, and style. A car would
never dare hit them. Not even if they
were jaywalking.

 

In spite of these near-disasters, and in spite of the fact that Mom has always been convinced that I would be hit by a car long before now (she feels that in addition to being highly distractible, I never paid enough attention to the Barney song, "Stop, Look, and Listen"), I haven't even come close. Not even when I jaywalked with the Chess Master after track... by which sentence I mean that I am a law-abiding citizen who has never jaywalked, not even as an impressionable fifteen-year-old who wanted to impress a boy she liked. Capisce?

I definitely wasn't jaywalking the other day when a car simply didn't see me.

I was using a crosswalk near Nameless Utah College. The little stick figure person on the crosswalk light shone brightly. "Place your fate in my stick figure hands," it said. "Step into the street," it said.

"Okay," I said. "I trust you, little stick figure person."

Alas, my trust was misplaced. The stick figure person didn't know that the driver of a car making a right turn wasn't paying attention.

The right-turning car came to an abrupt halt just before the crosswalk. I also halted--luckily I'd seen the car before it saw me. Had I gone any farther I would have stepped straight into its path.

An awkward impasse ensued. The car didn't move. Neither did I. 'Cause, I mean, what are the rules of etiquette in this situation? Nobody taught me the proper way to handle this in Driver's Ed. Or Pedestrian's Ed aka "Stop, Look, and Listen" (which by the way, I did actually pay attention to. Enough attention to appreciate the catchy tune, anyways).

Still no moving.

After a few seconds of this confusion, I moved forward. So did the car.

It didn't hit me...but when it braked its bumper was about to get pretty fresh with my leg. So to speak.

If crosswalks are this dangerous, then maybe I should just go back to jaywalking.

If I had ever jaywalked.

Which I haven't.

Move along, people. Nothing to see here.