An angel on my shoulder and a kind stranger

June W
June W
Nov 2 · 4 min read

Yesterday I fell off an e-scooter on my way to my therapist’s office.

I have this appointment every other week and I use the scooter as part of my multi-modal method of getting myself there. I take BART to 19th Street and there’s always scooters at the top of the escalator. Walking takes about 10 minutes, scootering takes five, but even if I’m not in a hurry I usually take the scooter because it’s fun. There are several routes I can choose to take for this short hop, and since my late Uncle Max used to say that you can make your life longer by taking a different route every day, I try to change it up.

Lime e-scooters outside of BART station.
Lime e-scooters outside of BART station.
Here are some scooters at waiting for people who get off BART to ride them. I can take one and go straight down 20th but if I do that I have to ride on the sidewalk for a 1/2 block which is not ideal.

This day I decide to go one block down Broadway and then turn right on 21st to go three blocks to the path by Lake Merritt. Just two turns, and only one block with lots of cars.

Broadway and 21st

I’m a careful scooter-rider and I fell because I was trying to be careful — I was getting ready to turn right from Broadway to 21st and had noticed there was a car coming up behind me so I wanted to signal to let them know I was turning. I took my hand off the handlebar to point right and just at that moment rolled over a little divot in the road, and the scooter went one way and I went another, executing a very brief superman-style flight onto the road face-first.

I sit up and look around. All the people on the adjacent sidewalk have stopped and are looking at me. A young woman asks if I’m all right. “No,” I say. “Am I bleeding? I think I broke my nose.”

I walk to the curb trying to read her face to see if I can figure out how bad I look. “Yes, your nose is bleeding” she offers. I get to the sidewalk and lay down.

Now I’m just lying there trying to take stock. She is by my side trying to help me figure out what I should do. She suggests that I call someone. “Good idea!” I think.

Meanwhile, someone has retrieved the scooter and my purse, which, though unzipped has somehow miraculously not dumped its entire contents over the road. Or maybe it did and whoever retrieved it kindly collected the items and put them back.

“Do you have any tissues in your purse?” she asks.

I think.

“No”.

Oh, but I do I have a paper N95 mask in there somewhere (because wildfires!). She asks if it’s okay to go through my purse (because respectful!). She can’t locate the mask, but comes forth with a panti-liner. “Maybe this will work,” she says. I look at it with delight. I’m remembering a story I heard once about using a tampon to stop a bloody nose and I’m wanting to tell her this story but it’s far too complicated to get into. I extract the panti-liner from its wrapping and begin to assess the extent of my injuries by dabbing at my face.

This is neither the actual scooter, nor the actual tree. It’s a photo from Wikimedia Commons and seems to have been taken in December 2018 in Lyon France. Perhaps I’ll return to the actual tree someday and set up a shot with a nearby scooter and replace this picture with something that accurately shows the scene, but for now this nice photo will do. Credit: Benoît Prieur — CC-BY-SA

Somehow I now have my phone in my hand. Oh, because the kind bystander has handed it to me. Because she had the idea that I should call someone. Boyfriend! Let’s call my boyfriend, I think. I look at the scooter leaning against a tree and realize I should end my ride or I’ll rack up a bunch of charges.

So that first. Then I call my boyfriend, who is somewhere with bad cell service and the poor guy can’t hear me. Or I can’t hear him. I hand the bystander my phone and ask her if she can figure out how to talk to him. She can’t, and hands the phone back to me without hanging up, so he apparently now gets to hear bits and pieces and muffled sounds as the rest of this story unfolds.

By now it seems all the other bystanders have dispersed and it is just me lying on the sidewalk blotting my face with a panti-liner, a kind stranger crouched by my side, and the scooter against a tree. Every 30 seconds or so someone walks by and asks if we need an ambulance or 911. “She’s okay,” says the woman. She asks me my name and tells me her name is Jess.

The only thing that seems to have broken is this mostly empty trial size bottle of mouthwash that was in my purse.
The only thing that seems to have broken is this mostly empty trial size bottle of mouthwash that was in my purse.
The only thing that seems to have ended up actually broken is this mostly empty trial size bottle of mouthwash that was in my purse. It’s not even really broken — just bent. The mouthwash in there is probably still good.

Jess asks me where I’m going and if she can help me get there. My therapist, I say, it’s just down the street. I sit up. She helps me up. “Can I walk with you or call you a Lyft or Uber?” she asks.

That’s okay, I’ll be fine. Thank you Jess.

June W

Written by

June W

I miss Cowbird, but happy enough to be here instead. Old stories here: http://cowbird.com/author/june-w/home/

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