Composure

Last night's battiness led to an interesting day for me. I had forgotten to set my regular alarm clock that sits atop my dresser. Luckily, my cell phone alarm was set for 6:05 a.m. Only trouble with my cell phone alarm is that I don't have to get out of bed to hit the snooze, and my cell phone snoozes 14 minutes longer than my regular alarm clock does. That extra 14 minutes allowed me to enter some bizarre dream sequence... and sleep much later than I had intended.

"Son of a bitch!" That's how my morning began. I had not packed a lunch. I had no idea what I was wearing. And for a moment, I had no idea where I was! The last thing I wanted to do after missing a day of work was be late! Showering, making coffee, and zipping through the house in varied states of undressed panic... a brief moment of clarity came over me. "Get it together!" "It's not that big of deal!" I'm always the first to arrive, and usually the last to leave the office, so no one would even know if I was a few minutes late.

Arriving slightly tardy, yet entirely undetected, I was surprised to find not one pile of urgency upon my desk. The room seemed dark; the air, heavy. The weight of my eyelids seemed to increase immediately. Was I going to make it through the day?

The catering service that monopolizes the venue I am holding an event at in two weeks still has not returned my calls. 98% of the invitees for this event still have not RSVP'd and the intern who has offered her assistance in securing another venue for a September event still has not come forward, or even shown up, with one smidgen of information. My event planning experience tells me this is all adding up to disaster but I'm choosing to retain my composure. I can't force the caterer to conduct his business in a professional manner, can't force people to RSVP, and can't force this intern to fulfill her volunteered obligations. I'll just be quietly appalled and keep doing my job.

Needing a break from the office monotony, I decided to go to the credit union and order more checks on my lunch break. No sooner had I turned right out of the office parking lot, I saw a car hit a man on a bike as it was pulling out of the next lot! What the hell? "I don't have time for this" I thought. I was starving. It was hot. And I quickly became disgusted with my initial response of utter inconvenience to the situation. I stopped my car right away and put on the hazards so the fallen man would not get run over by some other lunch-bound don't-have-time-for-this cubicle dweller. I was a witness, whether I liked it or not, and there was a man who had been thrown to the pavement who was not moving.

The man who struck the cyclist, a white man with white hair in a white shirt with a tie on gestured me to call 9-1-1. There was some funny connection with 9-1-1 on my cell phone. Lots of ringing, a click, then more ringing. Was 9-1-1 not taking calls today? The white man with white hair in the white shirt and tie had an interesting demeanor: composed panic. He kept touching the black man, in the black t-shirt, wearing black sunglasses, lying motionless on the black pavement next to his slightly crumpled dark blue bike, as if he wanted to help him... but he didn't seem to know how. The fire truck and ambulance came from opposite directions and met bumper to bumper to the left of the man, shielding him from traffic. Moments later two police cars arrived. One black and one white. Visually, the accident scene became very profound to me. I was craving a camera of some sort to permanently record the details my odd little mind would certainly fail to remember when I later found time to process what I had seen. Where was my notebook? My pen? I had not simply witnessed an accident... I was witnessing the literal and metaphorical timeless "black and white" racial controversy!

The paramedics interaction with the fallen black man in a black t-shirt lying motionless on the black pavement was focused on his well-being. I couldn't help but feel the questions of concern were more of professional obligation than true human concern. The crowd of responders had grown to a gathering of about ten people. Uniforms black, and uniforms white. Once the police arrived, the heavy outdoor air filled with a quiet awkwardness for me. One officer, a black man, paid no attention to the motionless man on the ground, greeting firefighters and paramedics with "the pound" and a chuckling grin. Another (white) officer walked right over to the man and said, "You know you aren't supposed to ride your bike on the sidewalk. And you were riding in the wrong direction." The third policeman, a stout and homely white man in a black uniform didn't even approach the man. He walked right up to me.

"Did you see it happen?"

"Yes I did. The man couldn't have been driving his car that fast out of the parking lot because the man on the bike merely toppled over his handlebars. I'm assuming the trees to the right made it impossible for him to see the bicycle coming." I reported.

"Well he's not supposed to ride his bike on the sidewalk and that man was looking the way he should be to turn left. You know what this is about (he gestures to imply money). You know he's going to be disabled now... it's all about the (again gesturing to imply money)."

Really? Couldn't it simply be about a man that was riding his bike, albeit on the sidewalk, and a man who was pulling out of a parking lot, both with their vision of the other obscured by some trees that were simply growing there; resulting in an accident?

Some ten hours later, my feelings aren't quite settled. There were so many dynamics... so many stories within the story. Like his bent-wheeled bike being parked half on the sidewalk and half in the driveway... just waiting to be struck again... as he was taken away to the hospital in an ambulance. Then the almost paper-rock-scissors approach two officers took towards who would take the man's bicycle to the hospital for the wounded man. For several minutes, I thought they might just leave it there!

Not having a camera, nor pen and paper to record my accidental experience left me feeling irresponsible, neglectful, and as if I were to suffer a permanent loss for not having these items. So after work, I went out to a huge everything-you-need-in-one-place store and caught a 49 cent sale on composition books. I bought ten! The blessed curse of possibly undiagnosed A.D.D. and rampant creative anxiety is a never-ending whirlwind of thoughts sporadically entering and exiting your brain... some of them silly; some of them brilliant. Yet all of them lost when they are not captured on paper. My only remaining task is to purchase a technologically-current camera, something I have involuntarily postponed for the sake of financial responsibility. If only I knew my job was secure! Waiting for that news has been making me bananas! I've been salivating over the thought of a more competent camera for over a year now! And a tripod! Enlarged prints... covering my walls with coveted frame-frozen moments of time! Composing. Composite. Compositions... composure.