A thud in the distance

I had a surreal night. Well, a surreal moment in an otherwise New Yorkish night. I was on my way to the subway after finishing my grad class, my mind blurred by lingering arithmetic and equations. It had been raining off and on all day, and there was a damp nocturnal stillness to Harlem. I was waiting to cross Broadway, letting the small stream of cars pass by, and as I took my first few steps into the intersection I heard a screech from a block away. I turned my head to look and I saw a black SUV jerk hard to the left. Then I heard a distant thump that sounded like a big rubber garbage can getting knocked over. Then I saw another car behind the SUV. Then I saw the SUV begin to rotate in an odd way. Then the SUV was upside down. It landed on its hood. The only noises were the initial thump and a hard thud a moment later. The whole scene was lit by gloomy street lamps filtering light through the moist air. It felt as if the accident occurred in a vacuum, in a dream.

I snapped out of my reverie realizing that I was in the middle of the street and could easily meet a similar fate as the SUV. I walked to the median of the road and called 911. I've never called 911 before. Everything was so quiet, so still. Yet there was an enormous vehicle lying on its hood. It was upright and then it was not. It just floated to the left and twirled through the air with surprising gracefulness for an object so big. It's strange to see something with that kind of mass waft through the air.

A mass of people ran to the scene of the accident but I didn't feel compelled to witness the aftermath. I hope no one was seriously injured. I stayed where I was a block away for awhile, talking with some of the classmates who had either been ahead of or behind me.

In the words of Alec Baldwin: "Well, that happened."

My night returned to the realm of normalcy in the subway car when a man randomly grabbed my attention and asked me to tie his shoe for him. He was rather portly and by the looks of him might have only barely had the mental, let alone physical, capacity to perform the task, so naturally I obliged. He made sure that I was comfortable with what I had just done. I assured him I was and we went on with our ride.

That was my night.