Keeping your eyes open might not always be enough. Especially in the dark.
Last night I was going to the Trade Fair when I encountered three men trying to get a big, awkward, heavy-looking set of storage shelves on top of a van. They were moving it from inside a garage, and they had the sidewalk completely blocked. I went out onto the street to get past, putting me on the other side of the van on top of which they were trying to place this big object.
No more than 3 seconds after I got past the van I heard a thundering crashing noise, and one of the dudes screaming “STUPID! YOU’RE SO FUCKING STUPID!” One of the other guys pushed the shelves too hard, sending them over the roof of the van and onto the exact spot on which I had been standing just 3 seconds earlier. It was 100+ pounds of metal that might have broken my neck, proving once again that you take a chance any time you step outside.
It prompted a flashback to one of the times a friend and I were clearing out my storage locker last year. We had a bunch of boxes stacked up on a rolling hand truck. The car into which we would place these boxes was in the parking lot 7 or 8 feet below. There was a graduated ramp that would have provided a path for bringing the cart to parking lot level but for whatever reason we decided not to use that. I was on the upper level, friend was at the car, and I pitched boxes down to him. What could possibly go wrong?
He was facing the other way when a strong gust of wind erupted. It was enough to dislodge the top box, causing me to reach out and grab it in an attempt to keep it from blowing away. In grabbing the box I ripped it open, and the wind blew it away, all its contents scattered across the parking lot. In the next instant the wind struck again, this time causing the entire hand truck to lose its bearings and jolt forward. It fell off the side of the surface and flipped over, all the boxes falling first and then the heavy, awkward hand truck itself crashing to the ground 7 or 8 feet below. If the friend had been just 2 or 3 feet closer he might have been crushed by this thing. He was facing the other way and would have not seen it coming.
On the other hand, given this scenario it would have made no sense for him to be standing those 2 or 3 feet closer and facing the other way. Were he standing on that spot at all he would have to have been facing forward and he would have seen this pile of stuff get jolted by the wind and start to fall down. He would have had plenty of time to react.
It’s nothing to lose sleep over but it reminds me how I’ve said “Good Luck” to people when they say they are moving to a new place, and as often as not those people respond by saying they don’t understand why people say that to someone who is moving. So much can go wrong in these scenarios. A women I knew a long time ago moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn. I wished her good luck and she was like, why do people say that? Later she would tell me that my good luck wishes were the first thing she thought of when the cops pulled her over on the BQE and asked her if she was aware that her boxes and possessions were flying around on the highway. She or someone had failed to secure the back door of the rental truck. With the help of the police she was able to get everything back, but all the while spent collecting her life’s remnants off the Interstate she kept thinking of me saying “Good Luck!”
