I had never come this close to hitting a pedestrian. So close.
I was on 19th Street, a busy thoroughfare I’ve driven a thousand times. The light coming through the canopy seemed ordinary, the buildings familiar, but something felt off. The part of my brain that senses below the surface registered that something was amiss. The light was green, but the car in the right lane was stopped. I slowed down.
A slight motion flickered in front of the stopped car, and I touched the brakes. A man entered my field of vision, stepping directly in front of my car. Adrenaline exploded. I stood on the brakes with everything I had, my eyes flung open. I might have yelled, I’m not sure. The man was looking straight ahead, chin high, the look of someone who crosses against the light to show he can.
The instant I flickered into his vision, his eyes flung open too, meeting mine, locked. In that moment, time hung in the air, everything got close. There was nothing else on earth, just he and me sharing the same bolt of adrenaline. He might have yelled, I’m not sure, if he did, we shared that too. There were no words in that microsecond, but we were both wishing hard for the same nonresult. My bumper stopped a foot before his body.
And then he broke our gaze. Looking straight ahead, he let his chin pull him forward and continued his saunter across the street. I sat there, heart racing, stomach high in my chest, afraid to breathe. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the driver behind me shaking his head.
My clenched body wanted to release a volley of anger. I had an impulse to rage at the man and his stupidity. Why had he been so reckless? I might have killed him! But alongside, there was a second impulse that did not want to be consumed by rage, wanted to let the energy of anger flow on by so it would not stick. I took a breath and drove on.
The moment had passed, but I still felt connected to the man. We had been wrapped in a bubble of intensity that was ours alone, a random moment, a flash of terror, where tragedy, perhaps death, had skated close but turned away. He must be rattled too, I knew from the fear I had seen in his eyes. I opened to our common tie and tried to sense what he might be feeling. Images, emotions, sensations came to mind.
I began to feel a need for autonomy, a desire for some small piece of real estate where I could be in control, even in acts of contrariness, where I could break the rules and make others wait for me. I don’t know if this was what the man was feeling or if it was my projection, but it softened me and made our tie seem stronger.
I started to breathe consciously, slow and deep, to calm myself. I included the man in my breathing, still in our bubble, and hoped it would calm him too. I still felt a thread between us, like two electrons that become entangled and never lose track of each other.
I wonder what we each took from our encounter, how each of us might be changed. I hope we are more careful, less brash, more deeply aware that life is paper thin. And I hope that I’m more open to the threads that exist between us all. Whether the moments are dramatic or mundane, they are there, latent, waiting for the right moment to tug me so I notice, shake me loose, and look at what’s in front of me.
Photo by Jashua Earle on Unsplash