I saved someone's life today
Feb. 11th, 2005 01:11 pmI had written earlier that I would rather buy the second book of Trudy Canavan's than I would of Robin Hobb's, and so it was that today I wandered down to Pioneer Square to pick up The Novice.
After picking the book up at Elliot Bay, I began walking back towards the square proper and the bus stop back up Queen Anne Hill. There's a wide intersection at what was once skid row (so named because loggers would grease the road with pigfat and send down logs from higher reaches of what is now First and Capital hills to the sawmills down by the waterfront) and is now simply Yesler. It's much wider than the other roads about it, and with the open "square" (really, a distorted quadrangle, where two different philosophies about how Seattle should be laid out met in violent opposition) the bright winterlight sun made even the Seattle afternoon air seem more breathable than usual.
The place is thick with cars and people; despite all of the laws protecting and encouraging pedestrians, Seattle is still a car-based city, but Pioneer square is so dense with shops and eateries that it's a natural congregation of foottraffic. I waited on the curb at Yesler and 1st, the new book open. I wasn't really paying attention, but the lights in the denser neighborhoods also chime softly when they change, to let the vision-impaired know when to walk. I heard the chime and stepped off the curb.
And indecisive woman in a large SUV had gotten stuck with her nose too far out into 1st Avenue, and she couldn't back up. I don't know what motivated her; there's a huge fine for blocking an intersection in Seattle, and even without a cop there would soon be a lot of frustrated people honking at her. She roared her engine to race across the intersection.
I hadn't seen any of this yet. I was reading. I heard, off from my left, the sound of an angry engine, and in the corner of my left eye there was a man in a grey flannel suit one pace in front of me. I don't remember willing my arm to move, but I grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him back out of her path.
"Whoa!" he said as the SUV raced past close enough to ruffle his collar.
"You all right?" I asked.
He nodded. He was an older man with a mustache. "Thanks."
She disappeared, he walked on. The encounter was over.
It felt... weird afterwards. The oddest part afterwards was reconciling the thought that I had reached out and touched a complete stranger. Everything else was as it should have been, but the peculiar taboo about not touching strangers so deliberately, about assault (which technically, it would have been, the uninvited touch of another) lingered with me.
I eventually put it out of my mind and boarded a bus back to the office.
After picking the book up at Elliot Bay, I began walking back towards the square proper and the bus stop back up Queen Anne Hill. There's a wide intersection at what was once skid row (so named because loggers would grease the road with pigfat and send down logs from higher reaches of what is now First and Capital hills to the sawmills down by the waterfront) and is now simply Yesler. It's much wider than the other roads about it, and with the open "square" (really, a distorted quadrangle, where two different philosophies about how Seattle should be laid out met in violent opposition) the bright winterlight sun made even the Seattle afternoon air seem more breathable than usual.
The place is thick with cars and people; despite all of the laws protecting and encouraging pedestrians, Seattle is still a car-based city, but Pioneer square is so dense with shops and eateries that it's a natural congregation of foottraffic. I waited on the curb at Yesler and 1st, the new book open. I wasn't really paying attention, but the lights in the denser neighborhoods also chime softly when they change, to let the vision-impaired know when to walk. I heard the chime and stepped off the curb.
And indecisive woman in a large SUV had gotten stuck with her nose too far out into 1st Avenue, and she couldn't back up. I don't know what motivated her; there's a huge fine for blocking an intersection in Seattle, and even without a cop there would soon be a lot of frustrated people honking at her. She roared her engine to race across the intersection.
I hadn't seen any of this yet. I was reading. I heard, off from my left, the sound of an angry engine, and in the corner of my left eye there was a man in a grey flannel suit one pace in front of me. I don't remember willing my arm to move, but I grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him back out of her path.
"Whoa!" he said as the SUV raced past close enough to ruffle his collar.
"You all right?" I asked.
He nodded. He was an older man with a mustache. "Thanks."
She disappeared, he walked on. The encounter was over.
It felt... weird afterwards. The oddest part afterwards was reconciling the thought that I had reached out and touched a complete stranger. Everything else was as it should have been, but the peculiar taboo about not touching strangers so deliberately, about assault (which technically, it would have been, the uninvited touch of another) lingered with me.
I eventually put it out of my mind and boarded a bus back to the office.
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