In which your intrepid author has a near-death experience...

Seriously. I was nearly reaped on a city street in broad daylight this afternoon. No, that's not a typo; I don't mean 'raped', I mean 'reaped' - as in, yours truly was very nearly collected by the Grim Reaper.

On the side of the building housing my office is a huge advertising sign which we manage. It was being posted with new ad copy so around 3:30 I went outside to check the progress. I had to cross the street to get a good view of the building and since there was no sign of any posting activity, I called The Boss to report. As I spoke to him, I started back across the street toward my building, dutifully crossing with the light in the pedestrian crosswalk.

I had barely - as in a split second before - put my second foot up on the curb on my side of the street when I heard the screech of brakes and squealing tyres. I turned just in time to see two cars spinning out of control into the intersection through the crosswalk where I'd been standing seconds before. The worst part, though, was that there was a young girl heading in the opposite direction; since she was facing that way, she saw everything in the seconds before the sounds alerted me. She saw the cars spinning right toward her, turned around and started running back to my side of the street, literally running for her life. I'm seriously not exaggerating here: if the spinning cars missed her by as much as a foot, I'd be surprised. From my perspective, I could see that the cars had kept spinning and were headed in a new trajectory, but she didn't know that. She gained the curb on my side of the street as the cars smashed into a light pole on the other side hard enough to shake it.

A lot of different things happened simultaneously, but in the interest of a coherent narrative I'll relate what happened as we pieced it together, rather than from my disjointed perspective. The busy street running parallel to the direction I was walking (in other words, I was crossing a smaller street perpendicular to Busy Street) is a four-lane, one-way street. A red Porsche Carrera was in the left lane, heading north. A beat-up, ragged-out POS Buick was in either the far right lane or the one next to it, also heading north until the point at which the Buick reached the intersection, when the driver decided to turn left abruptly, cutting across two or three lanes of northbound traffic. He clipped the Porsche and spun it out; they collided again as the Porsche spun. By then the POS Buick was out of control, he spun and fetched up against the light pole, getting in the way of, and stopping, the spinning Porsche. All of this happened in, on and around the spot where I'd been standing about three seconds earlier, and where the young girl was standing about a second and a half earlier.

Then the Buick tried to drive away! He was driving on two flat tyres with at least three bent rims. He limped the car into the parking lot of the hotel across the street from my building, so for a moment we thought he was stopping but clearing the intersection. Instead, he slowed down to trick everyone, then drove through a couple of parking lots that are separate, but kinda connected, eventually abandoning the car with the keys in the ignition and doing a runner.

The young girl, who turned out to be named Cari, was very upset and shaken (understandably!) and the Porsche driver was okay, just a little banged about. It hurt me to see that lovely Porsche crumpled, so I'm sure it did him. I walked Cari back over to the restaurant attached to the hotel, found her a place to sit and got her some water while we waited for the arrival of the Atlanta Police. She was so upset - I didn't know what to do for her. I know some people - my friend Cheryl is the most shining example - that are naturally nurturing, caring sorts of people who seem to know instinctively exactly the right thing to do in these situations, but I have no idea. So I got her some water and patted her back and told her everything was okay. I sat with her until her friends arrived and then I went to consult with Porsche Driver and The Cops.

Generally I have a pretty low opinion of my fellow man. I think people usually have ulterior, self-serving motives and if given half a chance will disappoint you in ways you never saw coming. But every once in a while, something happens that gives me hope, like today. There were probably 25 - 30 people who saw the accident either from various points on the street or from the windows of their hotel rooms, who rushed over to check on Porsche Driver and Cari. The restaurant manager saw everything and when Buick Jerk first started to drive away, he jumped into his car, followed the Buick around the corner and wrote down the tag number. Then he hauled ass back to the restaurant and started hovering solicitously around Cari, offering water, Coca-Cola, a snack, anything to help her shock. He asked about me, too, saying, "You were nearly hit as well! You were nearly hit as well!" - a fact which didn't fully dawn on me until later, because the worst/closest part of it happened when my back was turned. At least six people were offering Porsche Driver the Buick's tag number - of course, it didn't matter since the tag and the attached Buick were sitting two parking lots over with the keys in the ignition, but nobody knew this at the time. Everyone was bustling around trying to find out how they might help.

When the police arrived, everyone sat patiently to give their contact information and statement. My description of the driver was written in an Official Police Notebook. After some time had passed, with the cops taking pictures and talking to Porsche Driver, another delegation of cops came walking up from the cross street to the left with three girls. I'm unclear as to how they were caught but apparently these were the passengers in the Buick. The driver was a male, so I know the jerk who caused the whole mess was not among them. I'm not sure what was going on, but one of the girls was quickly handcuffed; I suppose they might have found outstanding warrants on her.

That's about all the drama. We talked to the cops, Cari started to get a little color back and was surrounded by her friends, Porsche Driver was okay. I went back up to my office a little after five and at that point, they hadn't apprehended Buick Driver. Ahem! So how was YOUR Monday?!?