Bad Luck

After a series of events I started to wonder if I had broken a mirror, passed under a ladder, or had an African-American cat cross my path. During the Friday morning rush hour commute, a woman fell down the metal stairs leading down from the ‘L’ platform. She was carrying a coffee in one hand and balancing a bunch of oversized bags in the other. I guess she missed a step and in slow motion slid down the stairs. Granted she didn’t tumble head over heels (more like an inverted slide), but it looked unpleasant. She was about three people in front of me, so I couldn’t do anything besides stare and think “put your hand on the railing now…no matter how fifthly it is”. The people immediately around her tried to catch her to no avail.

On Saturday, I was crossing Clark St. The light had been red for a while, so I was about at the mid-way point across the street after casual walking. Well a cabbie zoomed right through the red light, missed hitting me by a foot or two (I felt the whiff of air right behind my legs), and swerved around cross traffic which thankfully screeched to a halt.

I was on the bus on Sunday travelling north on Broadway Ave. (which is 4 lanes in my hood). The traffic light turned green, and the bus took off into the intersection along with all the other NB-SB traffic. I look out the window and see a blind man being lead by a seeing eye dog towards the intersection. At the curb, the dog DIDN’T STOP and took his unknowing owner across 4 lands of moving traffic. Cars were screeching to a stop in front of the guy and we all rapped on our seats and shouted to the bus driver “stop stop there is a blind man on the road”. The man got safely across the street, and I hope the first thing he said was “BAD DOG!!!!” Seriously, aren’t they trained NOT to walk into traffic? Maybe the blind guy had a really bad HMO and they were like “look, you are not covered for a top notch guide dog…so here take Rover who is more like a ‘C’ student.”

On Monday, I was standing over at a co-worker’s desk recounting all of the bad luck stories from the last few days. Ironically once I was done, I crossed my legs to turn around and the slender heel of my shoe got caught in a bow loop on the other foot. With the forward momentum and twisted up feet, I couldn’t help falling straight over like a chopped tree. I tried to catch myself by grabbing the cubical, but I missed and proceeded to sweep all the desk contents off with a loud clank and bonk. The office was silent for a moment until a friend ran over and said “I am SO GLAD I saw that, ah ha ha ha”, then everyone burst out laughing (including me).