Pedestrian Strain

Sorry I'm a few minutes late. I came across an obstacle as I was walking this morning.

There I was, minding my own business, listening to shuffled music (I let robots tell me what songs to listen to now), walking a nice brisk pace under threatening skies, when a young woman lept down the stairs of an apartment building and pulled onto the sidewalk just a few yards in front of me. She wore hard sold boots and each step she took was loud enough to break through the soft wall of music around me. Her walking rhythm was just slightly off from the Suzanne Vega song that was playing. "Men In A War" has a pretty deliberate rhythm propelled by the strumming of a couple of simple chords on an acoustic guitar. The sounds of her feet before me were fighting this rhythm in a way that made me feel instantly ill at ease. It was a lot like the battle between your turn signal and the high-hat of the partlicular song that the radio chose to play while you were waiting at the traffic light. Maddening.

SO, there I was faced with a conundrum of earth changing proportions. Do I speed up and try to pass this invasive creature or do I slow my own tempo and let her evil steps of chaos fade away in the distance before me? I was about to pick up the speed and make a run for it when she pulled out a lighter and torched up a cigarette. Like a coal train engine a head of me (the caboose), the smoke rose above her head and drifted back into my face. Then she picked up her own speed and I had no choice but to fall back and let her and her poison cloud and offensive heal clacking pull ahead of me until I was in the clear.

Phew. It's tough to be alive.