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Scary Moments In Commuting
Mar. 26th, 2007 09:22 amI just witnessed a head-on pedestrian collision between a woman carrying a baby and a blind man using a cane. It was right at the top of the stairs to the Arlington Street T stop (which is temporarily at Berkeley Street). The woman had just come up the stairs and the man was about to go down. She probably couldn't see that he was using a cane because of the baby and the baby's bulky blanket. They bammed right into each other, and the man's cane got entangled between the mother's ankles. Unfortunately, the blind man thought he was being attacked, and he reared back to defend himself. The problem was compounded by the fact that another person and I were wedged within inches of the colliding pair by the throngs going in and out of the stair entrance, who clearly couldn't be bothered to stop or stay out of the way (don't you just love people?). And we were all also within inches of the top of the stairs.
When I saw the cane tangled between the mother's ankles, my body/brain instinctively dropped the totebag and Metro newspaper in my hands and my arms readied to catch the baby if the woman fell. There was no conscious thinking involved; it was all animal instinct and transpired in under a second, which is a weird and frightening feeling. (Under normal circumstances I would never dream of touching someone else's infant without asking). There was a flash of eye contact between me and the other person wedged in by the crowd, and his hand reached behind the mother's back to spot her while I stepped a pace back to let her and the blind man disentangle. Not a word was exchanged between them except a quick "excuse me" from the mother as she hurried away with baby-in-arms. No one got hurt and the whole thing happened in about 7 seconds.
That could have been so much worse. Top of the stairs, baby, blind guy, oblivious crowds. Holy crow. Fate was kind this time.
Well, prior to that I had a lovely weekend, much of it spent with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
beowabbit. More on that later. I need juice (not coffee -- I'm jangled enough, thanks).
When I saw the cane tangled between the mother's ankles, my body/brain instinctively dropped the totebag and Metro newspaper in my hands and my arms readied to catch the baby if the woman fell. There was no conscious thinking involved; it was all animal instinct and transpired in under a second, which is a weird and frightening feeling. (Under normal circumstances I would never dream of touching someone else's infant without asking). There was a flash of eye contact between me and the other person wedged in by the crowd, and his hand reached behind the mother's back to spot her while I stepped a pace back to let her and the blind man disentangle. Not a word was exchanged between them except a quick "excuse me" from the mother as she hurried away with baby-in-arms. No one got hurt and the whole thing happened in about 7 seconds.
That could have been so much worse. Top of the stairs, baby, blind guy, oblivious crowds. Holy crow. Fate was kind this time.
Well, prior to that I had a lovely weekend, much of it spent with
beowabbit. More on that later. I need juice (not coffee -- I'm jangled enough, thanks).
