Last Saturday night, at the intersection of 42nd
Street and Eighth Avenue, as we were walking to the subway, we paused for a
traffic light. We had just come from the
performance of a play to which my brother and double sister in law (she’s my
brother’s wife and my wife’s sister) had treated us in honor of our 49th
anniversary, which fell on that day. As the four of us waited for the light to change, we heard the sirens of an ambulance and a
police car on Eighth Avenue just south of 42nd Street. The light did change, permitting us to walk
across the avenue, but the cars which had stopped for the red light were
blocking the ambulance and police car in front of them. Most of the pedestrians who had been waiting
to cross, now waited for the cars in front of the emergency vehicles to enter
the intersection, against the light.
We then saw an astonishing sight. An elderly man started to cross Eighth
Avenue, in spite of the wailing sirens and the cars which had begun gingerly to
drive uptown against their light. What
was he thinking? Another old man ran
after him and made him stop in the middle of the street to allow the cars and
the emergency vehicles to pass. When
they gained the other side of the avenue, the other man hugged the old man who
had so foolishly tempted fate.
People, that foolish old man was me. And the old man who ran after him was my
brother, who risked his life to save mine.
The traffic lights may be fool proof but they’re not
damn-fool proof. What was I
thinking? I thought I’d have enough time
to cross before the blocked traffic began to move. I was both stupid and wrong. Too late I remembered a character in T. S.
Eliot’s play, The Cocktail Party, saying “I’d rather get to Chicago a little
late than to Hell on time.”
All day I’d been thinking that if seven is a lucky number,
then 49, or seven times seven, must be doubly lucky. It turns out I was right.
Bismarck remarked that God
protects children, drunks, fools, and the United States of America. It turns out he was right too.
2101-2012 Anchises –
An Old Man’s Journal All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment