It’s a Mess
It’s an absolute mess outside. All the streets but the main throughways are coated and chunked with unscrapable ice islands floating in slush. It is hovering around freezing but the sun is bright enough to accomplish some melting. The gutters of the otherwise clear throughways are ushering the runoff downhill and puddling it at the crosswalks.
As I was driving downtown I saw a girl walking by the Community Rec Center. She was a victim of a splash-by. I could tell because she had on some exercise pants that made the water glisten in the sunlight. It wasn’t just her pants that were wet. Her entire left side was soaked. She was talking on her cellphone. I pulled up to the stoplight at Gilbert and Burlington. There were two cars in front of me and several behind. The splash-by victim was pulling even with my car and I lowered my passenger side window to hear what she was talking about on the phone, whether she was laughing off the unfavorable beginning to her day or whether she was crying to a close friend looking for sympathy. All I could hear was, “Don’t f— walk down Burlington.” I heard a car horn. The stoplight had turned green and the two cars in front of me had obeyed. I was holding up traffic.
I almost stepped into a wide, deep puddle by the Unitarian Universalist Church on Gilbert. A woman just ahead of me who went into the church did the same. I guess your foot still finds some puddles even if your church accepts all faiths as true.
