On Getting Puddle-Dumped by a Passing Car

I trudged along a downtown sidewalk on a temperate day after a snowy night. The air felt brisk and clean as it often does in clichés. The murk of wintry precipitation and urban pollution had settled to the ground, turning the streets and walks to sludge and the snow banks between them black.

Melted snow and the wetter sludge concentrated in the streets at the ends of alleys, driveways, and parking lot entrances, creating puddles that an optimist would recognize as harbingers of spring.

Until that halcyon season, however, the black, chunky mudge will remind us that it’s still winter as it lightly—almost frozenly—laps against its concrete banks. Then, of course, a car drives through it just so and the gentle laps turn to a tidal wave, or a broken water main, if I may switch metaphors midcourse.

Woe the rambling stranger who finds himself in the brief yet soakingly powerful wake of a car-crossed mud puddle.

Such a forlorn traveler was I this temperate day after a snowy night.

A pickup on the road beside me whizzed through one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes (a new one as of this morning’s semi-thaw). I saw it coming, but nothing could be done. I stood helpless through my millisecond of God-like foreknowledge. Then said pickup sent an arc of slimy streetglop straight at my core and legs.

First, I looked down and saw the hundred black, globular gunk-missiles turn to splotches on my sweater and jeans. Then I looked back with a certain sense of indignation at the offending vehicle, driving merrily on it’s mucky way, and I made eye contact with the pedestrian behind me.

We shared a slight moment of bonding. Then he said, in the accent that made Apu famous, “Lotta assholes out there, eh?”

I regret my heady response—much too high-minded for a streetside convo—but I’m so intelligent I couldn’t help but reply, “Heh.”

I’ll repeat that for those who may have missed it on the first pass in all its effortless yet erudite glory:

Heh.

What I should’ve said was something kind, like

  • Naw, it’s no big deal.
  • It’ll dry soon.
  • It won’t stain.
  • I’m sure they had no idea.
  • We all make stupid mistakes that afflict others with deleterious aftereffects that we could in no way have foreseen.

You know, something congenial, peacemaking. But I didn’t. I said Heh.

Then a second later a minivan almost slid into me while racing from a parking lot. After sharing one more moment of commiseration with me (“It’s us against them.”), my new Indian friend passed me by and was soon a half a block ahead. Remember, I was trudging. He, on the other hand, was at least ambling, if not striding.

With my momentary companion gone and the passing attack vehicles seemingly at bay, I began to wonder how many poor souls I’ve soaked with ballistic sludge on temperate days after a snowy night.