PS on yesterday (Teri similarly captured at a stop light)

The Scorpio, who has spent his work morning coaxing teenagers to hand over lethal weapons to him and trying to drum it into their heads that they're being played, groans as I start into the story of giving cash away to a dubious stranger. "Linda, tell me she isn't sitting on your couch. Tell me you didn't bring her home."

No. Didn't do that. Made a couple crucial errors in judgment, but not that one. Jeez Louise.

And ever since then, I've been pondering the idea of hypothermia. Normally, I would have been out of there, away from that woman in a New York minute. The abused woman story has been abused so often in the same circumstances that I absolutely knew better. I consider how my brain wasn't registering the familiarity of the story. Her jittery speech patterns. The lack of presence in her eyes. How, a few minutes later, my brain wasn't even in charge of my feet.

And then I consider the fact that I feel no animosity about the whole thing now, when I am warm and passingly lucid. I don't feel like a person who tried to do a good thing. I'm just a person who wanted to get warm. "She knew that," the Scorpio says, "she counted on you needing to just deal with the situation fast, without thinking.."

More surprisingly, I realize I don't feel like she is a person who did a bad thing. Everyone did what they had to do to get their needs met. It wasn't personal. On either side. If she hits on me again, I'll grin and tell her, "You got me once, toots - but not twice."

Now the sidewalk. The bloody knee-eating, ankle-twisting vicious murderous sidewalk? That's another matter. That's personal.

Links. Lynx. Lincs.

New people to read, stolen directly from Ariel's links list. If you have not wandered over to read about The Sad Case of Mr. X or visited Edvard Moonke, I have added links. Now Mr. X is simple enough to find. Just go here. Mr. Moonke, however, has a blogspot blog (must read "the laptop fairy of Darlington") but has recently moved to a new spot here! In my links list, I've entered his new wordpress URL - in anticipation that the pressure will force him to write copious amounts of words.
Enjoy. And thanks Ariel. I don't think I'm finished cribbing from your links list yet!