Different Book Ends

With work reaching a crescendo today and tomorrow, I couldn't sleep very well. Not very unusual, but still worth noting. So, I got up relatively early after squeezing another hour of blood out of the rock that is my sleeptime and headed off for a walk around the Silver Lake Resevoir.

About a 1/6 of the way around, on the east side, I heard an impact and picked up head to search for the cause. I saw a kid on the street, his bike lay flat on the street and an older gentleman in the car right in front of them. The kid had a friend, also on his bike, who stood looking at him. Now, I don't know if the impact I heard was the car hitting the boy on his bike or the boy on the bike falling to the pavement just before almost getting hit by the car. All I know is everyone looked dazed. There even was a man in car behind the other car -- all seemed frozen, but I kept walking towards them.

The boy picked himself up, picked up his bike, moved off the street and after looking at what seemed like a couple scratches, hopped back on his bike and joined his friend on his way to school. The man in the car remained dazed and the car behind him slowly moved on. I felt like I wanted to call across to the kid, "Are you alright? If you're head hurts, go see the nurse." But, I didn't. It actually reminded me of a time when I was a kid and got hit riding my bike to school. I was shaken, but I picked myself up and rode on to school (after getting the person's info). I had a term paper due or something.

So, that was bookend number one. Bookend number two happened near the end of my walk where I encountered that very old lady, who's always dressed to the nines, walking around the resevoir. She clearly has some kind of dementia, but everytime she sees somebody, she could not be more ecstatic to see them. Today, it was a middleaged african-american woman and her dog. The old woman cooed at the dog and gave a wonderfully warm embrace to the other woman.

I guess the bottom line is I hope the kid is alright and I wish I could be as sweet and loving as that older woman is now.