two lives at a cost to none

As we all know I was supposed to be at work today doing very important things for food money. Somehow in the mix of the few crazy days I’ve had, the bank thought it would be entertaining to issue a me a new key card… to remind me of being broke I suppose.

So this morning I hopped the train in Richmond betting to jump off at Flinders Street. However since my face was buried in iPad writing memoir chapters, I accidentally got off at Parliament and had to hoof it across the city to the bank.

At the bank the teller took ages, a three minute trip turned into a ten minute mission. I left and walked back to the train station. Upon entering, I decided, for whatever reason, that I would ride the tram back to my house instead. I hadn’t taken the tram yet and imagined it would be a good writing trip.

On my way to the tram I walked behind an elderly woman and her two or three year old granddaughter listening to the woman say, ‘Hold my hand tight when we cross,’ before proceeding to (nearly) walk in front of a car soaring through the city at around 50 m/p/h.

This is the part when I concurrently had a heart attack while swooping in front of the pair with a breathless ‘Stop!’ and somehow re-situating them back on the sidewalk as the speeding fool’s vehicle brushed the back of my baggy denim shorts.

‘Thank you,’ said the woman in a state of shock nearly comparable to mine. And then she said, ‘Are you American?’

Accepting she might be a bit loopy at this stage I said, ‘Uuuuh, yeah. I left New York City like two weeks ago…’

‘I got married there forty years ago.’

Good thing I wasn’t at work hey… I’m still shaking a bit.