Starbucks Cup #67, Longwood Ave, Boston and my timely undeath

The Way I See It #67

Throughout millennia, traditional

peoples have believed features of

the landscape were alive. Whatever

our beliefs may be today, we have learned that we must strive to

understand our place in the

environment and to reach a

sustainable equilibrium with it.

--Johan Reinhard, Ph.D.

High-altitude archaeologist and

National Geographic

Explorer-in-Residence.

By far my favorite Starbucks cup yet.

My timely undeath occured today. I say that because it could have been (though unlikely) my untimely death, but it was not.

As per usual, I took the red line this morning, and was unusually proud that I was on the train at 7am, which means I will be on time, perfectly so, for work. This made me excited, as I had been late every day for the past 7 days or so. sweet. So I'm minding my business on the train and a guy walks on with 2 kids under the age of 4. Shockingly, the man next to me stands up, and the dad tells the little girl to sit. I think "well he should sit with the little boy, who's even smaller than the girl." SO I get up and say "you sit too." He lets the little boy sit. A bit off the mark, but whatev, it makes me happy that I did something nice for someone. After standing for about 10 minutes watching the little kids be all excited about riding the train, I remember why I like getting on at Braintree, the first stop: SO I CAN SIT AND SLEEP. I'm standing on the train, holding on to a dirty pole and think "this is no good. but AH! It's only 7:39, I still have time to catch the 7:40 bus!" When the train pulls up to JFK/UMASS, I lean forward to assess the situation: the bus is by the curb, nearly empty. Sweet, I think, the bus will wait for us, since it's empty and the driver can clearly see the train pulling up the to the station. I make my mad dash to the stairs, and up them I go. I like to get ahead of the bus crowd right at this point. This ensures me a seat, plus I hate getting bogged down in the thronging masses of BC High boys with their huge awkward bags and slow-moving trudging steps. I get to the main thoroughfare and then exit the station. I have three flights of stairs to go down. Another woman and I have clearly moved to the head of the pack in hopes of catching the bus that has now started to move out of the station. "Dammit" the woman next to me says. We start to run. Now I have high heeled boots on, but that's not a big deal, as I can run in anything. And I mean anything. I start running ahead of her and make it to the first flight of stairs thinking "if the bus driver sees me on the bottom flight of stairs running he'll stop" I move on to the second, now way ahead of everyone. I'm about halfway down when I stumble, launching my body headfirst towards the concrete landing. I'm not used to falling that way, so it took a split second to figure out what was happening. I hear the lady who was running with me scream, loudly. It must've helped me to snap out of it, because I grabbed the railing to prevent myself from landing on my head, all the while thinking "this can't be good." I manage to get my feet under me, but this cause my right ankle to turn inward, which in turn caused my knee to bend. My shin hit the stairs and then I slid the rest of the way down and miraculously landed on my feet. Everyone paused for a moment and I got up, straightened my jacket and said "well it certainly isn't worth breaking my leg over." The lady behind me said "I screamed because I thought you were gonna land on your head" I said "oh no, I'm fine!" (though embarrassed as hell). Then she said "Did you break your ankle." I was like 'uh I hope not, but if i did this bus goes to the hospital, hahahah." I got on the bus first (I deserved it after all that) and sat down. That's when the pain hit me. Adrenaline had saved me before, but as soon as I sat down I was like "Oh SHIT that HURT!"

Really, I'm fine....banged up, sore, but fine, considering i could've landed on my head, hahahaha