A couple of things real quick.
One, I don't go to parades, I don't watch fireworks shows, I don't stop at accidents, and I don't follow fire trucks. I am not a rubbernecker, or an ambulance chaser. I don't go to street fairs, block parties or concerts in the park. I don't go to marches or rallies. Wherever and whenever a crowd gathers I usually avert my eyes and keep moving. I try to keep my shared experiences down to things that affect me and the people I know personally.
Two, my wife complains I am always in a hurry. That I rush through life and everything I do. That I never relax and just appreciate the moment. Any moment. Look at that bird, look at that sunset, look at that, that, and that... (you get the point, it's always something.) It's true. People ask me, "What are you up to these days?" And I always give them the same answer, "I don't know, but it seems to take up all my time."
So, I was as surprised as anyone when I decided to hang around and see how this baby played out.
And I wasn't the only one. The guy on crutches was pretty close to the action, maybe too close. He was practically inside the car. Was it his car? Was there something really important in the car? He wasn't yelling, "I can't find my child!" or "Oh my god, I think I left my lights on!" or "I just had the oil changed!" So who knows what his deal was at this point. Maybe he just really liked the smell of burning rich corinthian leather. But, if it was his car it must've been a hell of a scramble to get out of the car with those crutches. These weren't broken leg crutches by the way, they were, for lack of a better term, permanent crutches, the kind someone with cerebral palsy would use, or someone who was missing a leg or two would have, forearm crutches. I don't know that he actually had cerebral palsy and he was wearing long pants, but just the idea, that a legless guy with c.p. is tooling down Bardstown Road on a sunny Monday in a car smoking like an Icelandic volcano, with zero visibility, waving a warning crutch out the window like a white flag, whose every move is a herculean task that he performs with a hero's stoic grace, somehow manages to get it off the road and out of traffic, parks it, blindly finds his crutches in the dense smoky haze of his traveling smoke factory, *(below) and bravely and courageously drags his physically diminished body out of this Krakatoan taxi before it blows, is kinda cool.
Assuming, of course, that it was his car.
The Fire Department finally arrived and and a crowd started to gather, so I took that as my cue to leave. As I was leaving I took one last look back and I could swear I saw the guy throw his crutches in the bushes and hop on a bus.
*(The car had to have been smoking for awhile, you don't get this kind of smoke volume right away, maybe he tried to shrug it off as the usual amount of smoke, with the lack of vet testing regulations, and this being Kentucky, maybe he thought he was well within the EPA standards for smoke levels for a mid-sized American car in traffic.)
