On the way to the train station

Momentum makes things better. When I first watched skate videos I would be all dayuuummmmmmm those guys are going fast. I first experienced this fact when I found that it was easier to go down stairs on my bike when I was going faster. So, in order to negotiate a curb if you are perhaps, in a WHEELCHAIR, you need to be going a little fast.

I was walking with my fellow foreigner friend, we were waiting at a stoplight, and this old man in a powered wheenchair rolls up next to us. This wasn't one of those badass 200 pound things like in the USA, it was much more rickety and had a rather rudimentary power system. I said out loud to my friend, "woah dood, how rare is it to see a handicapped person in Waegwan?" And a bus drove by right then, and sometimes the busses here drive a little fast, so we expressed a mutual feeling for how gross it would be if the poor old man rolled out in front of the bus. Yeah we're a little sick. So then we started talking about being incinerated by global warming and I brought up this indie flick that I saw with Tim Robbins called Code 46 where the sun was all dangerous. So we're gabbing about this for a while, and strolling down the busy Waegwan street, the whole time this old man in his wheel chair is around 20 feet ahead of us. All of a sudden I see something that doesn't look right out of my peripheral vision, so I look forward and the old man is trying to negotiate going down a curb in his wheelchair. This is where my talk of momentum comes in. He was trying to go down a curb, so if he had just hit it with a little speed, even a tiny bit, he would have been better off. But he was gingerly trying to negotiate himself down the curb. You can imagine where this is going. We were too far away to run up and help the man down the curb, so we stood there in horror and watched the man slide to his left and fall out of the chair. He was trying to hold on with his left hand, so he fell on the ground and his left arm was twisted under him, and he just laid there flapping like a fish for a few moments. My friend and I exchanged a few exclamations, then hurried up to the man, who was laying on the ground, he had hit his the side of his head on the ground so there was already a little blood coming down his face, we pick him up and put him back into his chair. He is looking at us dazed and not saying anything, so we each took an arm and put him back in his chair. By that time these two cute Korean 20 something girls had come up, and one of them had already pulled some tissues out of her purse to WIPE THE BLOOD OFF THE GUYS FACE. And this other Korean guy came up and picked the old man's glasses up off the ground and was trying to bend them back into shape. So we stayed there for a few more moments, and then we cautiously walked on with many whispers and uuuuhhhhhh's, and now the image of the old man falling out of the wheelchair is burned into my memory. Every time I go past that curb I think of it. And I will forever, I imagine. I wonder how many times in my life I'm going to tell this story? Probably about 10 thousand more times. And it will probably get more and more in depth every time.