Yesterday I went to see the the movie "Old Dogs" in Spanish ("Dos Canguros muy Maduros" with some friends from Hoyo. I was pleasantly surprised that I understood almost 100% of the Movie, and also enjoyed it. Almost as much as the movie though, I enjoy the spanish translation of the name. "Canguro" is Spanish for "Kangaroo" and also apparently an expression for a baby-sitter. "Maduro" just means ripe, or mature.
The not-so-enjoyable event of the day happened as I was almost home. I was coming out of the metro, preparing to cross the street. Seeing that the crosswalk light was green, I proceeded to walk across the street. That's when I noticed a car turning into the intersection. Turning very rapidly, without slowing down, as is the custom of most vehicles upon entering an intersection occupied by pedestrians. "Good grief, I'm about to be hit by a car," I thought. It is a blessing that the driver was turning into the intersection, and not coming straight on, because otherwise he would have been moving much more rapidly. If that had been the case, I might not have had time to react, and regardless would have been injured in some way. As it was, I had a split second to think, and instinct kicked in. Instead of trying to make it the rest of the way, out of the middle of the road, risking being clipped by the car, I leaned into the hood of the car, so that I fell down on top of the hood, missing the bumper entirely, and avoiding injury. The result was that I made a rather large bang on the hollow metal, and this was sufficient to stop the car in it's tracks. I got up and assured the driver that I was unhurt, but they must have either been badly shaken or thought I hurt their car (I'd like to hope it was the former) and proceeded to jabber at me in rapid and loud Spanish, which to me sounded slightly angry. I tried to explain I was unhurt, and not angry at them, and that I HAD had the right of way, but they continued to jabber, and so I walked away, still with my heart beating like it was still fleeing oncoming cars.
On reflecting on the incident, many things have come to my mind. The first is that I could have very easily been severely hurt, and I wasn't. For that, I thank God. Secondly, I must admit that all of those action movies viewed in my teen and recent young-adult years have actually not been a complete waste of time. They have enabled me to view an obscene number of car-person collisions, and so I have observed the physical interaction of a car striking a human body. This, coupled with many instances as a teenager of pretending to get hit by a friend's car (driving at very, very low speeds in a parking lot of course) gave me a natural instinct that served me well in the case of a probably unavoidable collision. By jumping up on the hood, as I have done so many times to friends' cars, I avoided the hardest and most unforgiving part of the car in a low-speed car-to-human collision: the bumper. So I was able to walk away scared to death, but without so much as a bruise, which I otherwise most certainly would have sustained to my knee region.
Who'd have thunk. Screwing around in the parking lot and watching Ford, Hanks, Damon (ok, so those are the only action-y actors I know) and the rest of the gang do their thing may have just done me some good after all...
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