Walk on By

All my friends know that happy hour is very important to me. I won't let anything get in my way when I want to enjoy 1/2 priced drinks. My friend Laura and I were walking to a bar after work and I was eager to get there before the specials ended. Because of construction going on between 8th and 9th avenue on 52nd street, the sidewalk was narrower than normal. There was a barricade next to us on the right so we couldn't walk too far in to the street either. As we neared the bar, an old man with a cane was walking--more like inching--towards us.

I knew we needed to walk around him but there was a huge puddle of water in the street and I didn't want to trample through it in my brown suede shoes--but I also didn't want to wait for old man river to finish taking his baby steps on by. I side-stepped around him and barely grazed his left arm as I moved to the other side. Feeling accomplished, I turned around. The old man twisted his head to the left and spat, "Hey, Lady! Don'y you see I'm walking here? You care more about your shoes than a human life!"

Ok, there was no way I almost killed this guy. Don't get me wrong, I respect the elderly and will probably be a bitter old woman like this man one day, but he was totally overreacting. I just stared at him through my sunglasses, dumbfounded, with my mouth open in shock. Laura froze.

"I'm sorry," I said half-heartedly.
"Don't fight with me!" He said.

Meanwhile, a long line of people were waiting, all trying to get by. Laura finally walked around him as I had, also avoiding the puddle. The old man just stood there, hunched over, while everyone followed our lead. What else could we do?

"Some people need to leave New York before they get too old," Laura said. I laughed. Yep, that guy had definitely lived in NYC too long.

(photo by flickr's mirko, "Godfather 2")