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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I was out on my bike Monday night around nine, lightless since both my bike lights stopped working last year. One fell, one died naturally. This made me somewhat uneasy while I was wandering streets, mildly unsure of where I was, but soon I found the right way again and part of that was a small street with a tennis court or the like on its right side. Evidently there was an event there that people were watching, since there was a small crowd there and a few parked cars.
Carefully steering around the cars, I came to one last one that was running, lights on. I slowed down behind it and waited for it to turn. Instead it started backing up, something my bike doesn't really do. So I stumbled off and scramble-ran with it to the sidewalk, glancing askance at the car. What the hell was it doing? (Car-people amalgams are "it" unless the people are visible. Bionic bicycle-humans are "them" - more humanized, though also more easily demonized if they exhibit bad behaviour.)
As I passed its open front window, an English voice with a Spanish accent scolded, "You're dangerous, in the back of my car!"
My first thought was that if someone was mad at me, I'm glad they were being mad at me in English and not French, since I can explain things better in my first language.
And the speaker was beautiful, I thought, with wavy dark hair that fell over her shoulders as she leaned over her teenage daughter in the passenger seat. The daughter had large brown eyes - also beautiful - that looked concerned rather than stereotypically bored.
The third thought was me realizing what the car was doing and why she was justified. "I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't know you were parking, I thought you were going forward."
She said something like "Okay," mollified and unvengeful, so I turned right in peace. Relief and the after-effect of fear battled in my mind (the car wasn't going fast enough to hurt me, but it could've gone faster, and the sight of it heading towards me was startling.)
And as I was speeding along Donegani I thought of what I could've said, were I in some sort of comic fantasy where it was my mission to flirt with everyone:
to that line - "You're dangerous, in the back of my car" -
I'd wink and say, "You BET I'd be dangerous in the back of your car!"
And then the teenage daughter would have been really concerned. Because, like, ohmygod, that's SO gay. (My mental voice-dubbing service is kind of stereotypical.)
I smiled all the way down the street.
But then I realized, more seriously, that my problem wasn't just not realizing what that particular car was doing; my main problem was lack of visibility. I needed lights. The mandatory wheel reflectors weren't much help. So yesterday I bought new lights - a white one for the front and red one for the back, because cars set the trend for that particular colour scheme - and now I'm less dangerous.
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