To The Men Who Saved Me From Myself Yesterday

Crossing L Street at a grey, drizzly afternoon hour yesterday I had my head buried in the Treo screen and was only peripherally keeping an eye on the street. Seeing out of the blurred corner of my eye that the two men who'd been waiting on the opposite side were heading across now, I stepped off the curb and started toward them. Idiotically, I never really lifted my eyes from the screen, and in a nanosecond realized that I was stepping into the path of a dump truck; that the two guys had been paying attention and had time to get across before it lurched through the still-green light and that I had no such time. Without yelling or even saying a word, one of the men heading toward me realized what was happening and put his arm across my body to restrain me from stepping further into the truck's path. I was speechless and couldn't think fast enough to thank him. He headed into the National Association of Home Builders, where I can only assume he works behind an office door marked "Superman."

Then last night I crossed that same street to meet up with my significant other, fearing I was about to step into the path of another dump truck as it were. There was something I needed to talk to him about, something that had been causing me to lose sleep and a bit of sanity and my health, because I'd been fretting about it and afraid to say anything. Ironically, although I get paid to communicate for a living, I am not an apt communicator where matters of the heart are concerned. Anxiety doesn't get aired. It goes into a compact ball in my stomach and my stomach and I have a deal worked out in which we never speak of it again. As such, I assume typically that worries unaddressed are worries that don't cause problems. Now, I've used this space to poke a bit of fun with the S.O. from time to time, and he has suffered it all with good humor. So it is only fair that I say that as we walked home in the gloomy chill last night, he reminded me, without even trying to, why I fell in love with him in the first place. He listened patiently as I said what I had to say. He did not interrupt or launch into a Hamlet-esque soliloquy at the corner of Connecticut and K about most pernicious women. He did what he does best. He gathered me into a hug that smelled like Ivory soap and wool, and he kissed me on the top of my head, and told me he understood what I was saying and everything would work out.

Here's to the ones who put their arms across us, and around us.