A Very Short Trip

We were in the middle of the intersection when the light changed.

"It's okay," I said in my most confident voice.  "They won't hit us."  I hoped that saying it would make it so.  She continued her slow and careful progress across the street, and I kept an eye on the drivers of the truck and two cars, hoping that we wouldn't need a second light cycle to get across the remaining two lanes of traffic.

Maybe parking across the street from the restaurant had been a bad idea.

We were out because I needed supplies.  Or maybe I really didn't, but I needed to get away from my studio so I invented an outing.  I hadn't seen my friend in a while so I called and invited her to go with me and get some lunch.  Always eager for a reason to get out of the house (and good food), she said she would be ready in an hour.

We became friends in college.  As working young women after college, we would regularly go shopping on the weekends and then have lunch.  If the shopping trip was stressful, we would just have dessert.  We had more than one "lunch" that consisted of soup or salad and a giant piece of chocolate cake.

Her energy was starting to flag by the time I parked at the restaurant, and we were both hungry, which leads to poor decision-making as evidenced by my parking across from the restaurant.  It doesn't sound like a big deal, but here's the thing about my friend: she has multiple sclerosis.  She has been using a walker for the past year.  The last time that we went out without the walker we both almost ended up on the ground and decided that we shouldn't do that again.  Imagine, if you will, two women on a rainy day, one trying to balance the other's lack of balance, as they try to step up onto a curb with piles of soggy leaves.  It looked quite perilous, and a truck driver stopped and got out to make sure we were okay, but we were laughing at the absolute ridiculousness of the situation.  It's like that with her.

So there we were in the middle of the street.  She kept walking and I apprehensively watched the slowly increasing number of cars that were waiting for us.  We made it to the other side just as the light changed again.  We were safe.  No one had honked at us.  No one had tried to intimidate us by nosing their car forward.

"Maybe that wasn't the best idea," we said simultaneously, looking back at the intersection and laughing at our folly.


Hanging out with some awesome bloggers at yeahwrite this week.