Yesterday, I unintentionally scared the hell out of a pedestrian in a crosswalk. I was doing taxi service around 4:00, coming up the dreaded hill on Appleby. It bothered me today. She was obviously physically fit because she instinctively employed a combination of a windmill defense and a double time step inspired by bad ’80s music. What she didn’t know were two things. First, it was exactly at that point several years ago I was rear-ended and it totaled my car, after I had experienced the worst couple of weeks of my life. Second, yesterday a car behind me had been engaging in aggressive driving. After I made the right turn onto Appleby, I had foolishly hoped that he focused his attention on his next cave drawing. Instead, he had accelerated much too quickly behind me after making the same turn. There is no way he would have avoided hitting me if I hadn’t gassed my little vehicle very quickly. I made a turn with a wider arc to give myself just enough space to avoid the idiot behind me as well as not scaring the pedestrian. But I hadn’t accounted for her instinctive reaction. The cretin behind me sped up the hill on his way to whatever nonsense such people get involved in. All the pedestrian saw out of the corner of her eye was a little blue cloud of a car apparently heading toward her. I tried to wave an apology profusely but she was already making her way across the crosswalk shaking her head in disgust. Today it was back to normal and instead of worrying about somebody hitting me from behind I kept an eye on the vehicles coming down the hill at 70 mph. I wish I could apologize to the woman. And also congratulate her on both her dance moves and physical agility.
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