Thursday, January 9, 2014

My shoulder blade hurts a little

Hey, have you heard that it's been kind of cold out in the Northeast? It is. Nobody strolls down the street. Everybody rushes, to get out of the cold. Today I was crossing the street, and the woman in front of me was walking slower than I was comfortable walking, so I side-stepped her and then was next to someone else. Then I started crossing the other street, and a little more than halfway across I felt something hit my shoulder, and it hit again and again, harder each time.

This is so dumb, but I wanted to turn to see what it was, knew if I turned it would hit my face, and it didn't occur to me at all to turn around towards the left instead of the right. I don't know why. People started saying something, yelling, and somebody on the other side pulled me away even though half a second ago it was a tight crowd and there'd been nowhere to move away.

When I got pulled away, I saw. It was an old man hitting me with a cane. A cane that was like a tire iron. He apparently liked walking next to the slower woman but didn't like walking next to me. So instead of just dropping back to walk next to her, he decided the way to handle it was to hit me.

After I was out of his reach he got angry that he couldn't hit me anymore and his screaming intensified. He was going on and on about hating it here. So I screamed back at him. "SO LEAVE! Who the fuck do you think wants you here?!" Some lady told me to calm down and dragged me over to a nearby tiny restaurant. She bought me a coffee. I shook my head no, but she shoved it at me, "Drink, drink. Calm down." Turned out it was a Vietnamese coffee, so it was really good, and I actually did feel the adrenaline go down.

A couple of other people came over and asked about calling the police. I said no, the calm-down lady said no, that I was fine, and a guy leaned out into the street and yelled no cops. It turns out a few people had surrounded the old man and taken away his cane.

When I came home and told Josh what happened, he wanted to see. I'd taken Tylenol to make the swelling go down, but Josh said it looks terribly swollen anyway. That it's going to look even worse tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to waking up tomorrow.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Tylenol won't work for swelling.
Ibuprofen, like in Motrin or Advil, works as an anti-inflammatory and is also a pain reliever.
Signed,
Gail, a pharmacist that reads your blog

Lil'Sis said...

Jesus, people are nuts! Hope you heal soon.

sam said...

Well Gail, I guess that explains why it still looked swollen to my boyfriend, huh? Thanks for the tip - now I took some motrin!

Nina said...

wtf! hope it feels better soon! :(

Abby said...

Some people are nuts, but other people are lovely. As awful as that story is, it kind of restores one's faith in 95% of humanity. So glad for all the people who helped out. Feel better! Also, try a heating pad on your shoulder.

One crazed mommy said...

Wow that's messed up! Hope your shoulder gets to feeling better!

Lisa @ Lisa Moves said...

Yeesh, isn't this the second time you have been physically assaulted by a crazy man for no reason? I hope you feel better soon.

Suzanne said...

Crap! Feel better!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a far-fetched story in any other city except for NYC. Then it's a typical everyday story. Hope it's healed by now.