THE DASH
Hamilton, Ontario. June 28, 2015.
It's Sunday. Early. Summer warmth, richly saturated light, and the Carolinian morning chorus fill the nearly empty city street (empty except for me and another man.)
The man, slow and round and aged, is pulled along by his walker. We are headed in opposite directions and walk on opposite sides of the street. He leaves his helper in the middle of the sidewalk and lonely walks away from the street, toward the doorway nook of a closed business. There the man drops his pants to piss upon the building. I'm quite sure he knows that I am here and quite sure he gave me or my presence no thought of any kind.
Midway through his territorial pissings, his walker, resting on a slight angle and on a slight incline, begins creeping toward the street. Before the walker makes it to the fall at the curb, the gentleman notices it leaving the scene – perhaps catching a glimpse of it's slow motion in the reflection of the window he stood facing.
Turning swiftly from his public urinal and his little wet act, he groans a bear-sound and attempts an absurdist dash. As I pretend not to watch this scene unfolding, somehow, dash he does: dick out, still whizzing, pants still at his ankles. He is at his walker almost immediately, seemingly defying his bound and bodily predicament.
But, alas, speed was not all the task required. No. On this day, at this time, in this instance, co-ordination was also called for. And yet, in this instance, at this time, on this day, the man, instead of lunging out and grabbing onto the arm of the walker in the nick of time, saving it from pitching into the street, he misjudged distance, reaching out only to punched the walker, sending it and the contents of its basket and pouches flying across three lanes of roadway. Coins and pens, cans and who-knows-what, sailed and crashed and rolled around in obtuse and slowly settling spirals on the convex concrete.
The man, no longer peeing, stepped off the curb, reached over and righted his walker, then bent over at the waist, hairy assness to the sky, not to return his pants-waist to his hips but to awkwardly proceeded with property reclamation.
Something inside me told me I should run over and help. I told that little something inside me to shut the hell up.
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