The other day I decided to work from the balcony of my apartment. The reason I made that decision was because the icy cold of my air-conditioned 635 square foot, man-made refrigerator had gotten to me. I felt so much like an Eskimo Pie that I considered wrapping myself in stadium blankets. OK, I could have turned the air down, but instead I decided to soak up some rays before winter returns in October.
As soon as I stepped into the 85 degree heat, I noticed some flies, sweat bees, a cigar butt (left in an improvised tin-can ashtray last December), two dead plants, a pair of Ikea plastic chairs, and stains on the floor from the illegal grill that was on the balcony above me.
While basking in the warmth of the sweet July sun, I became aware of the reality that in less than 30 minutes my tiny porch-perch would be directly on the periphery of the bell-shaped curve of busyness called rush hour. As traffic began to build, my natural convection-oven deck began to remind me of one of those elevated traffic cop booths that sit above the roads in places like Hong Kong or New Delhi where 20 unmarked lanes of traffic converge into the busiest intersections in the world.
The foot traffic, on the sidewalk one floor below me, was constant too, as dozens of people made up of all makes and models were wending their way home to the North Side without the aid of cars, buses, taxis, or motorcycles.
It always strikes me as curious that people in the city seem to do a lot more walking than their country cousins.
After personally having walked a few blocks to the post office, eating a salty, tuna-fish-salad sandwich, and sitting on high, stool-type chairs for the past several hours, I noticed that the heat had cost me by creating a couple of slightly swollen feet. Nevertheless, the thongs of my splinter-protecting, summer footwear, thankfully, still fit between my toes. In fact that look kind of reminded me of a plump girl bending over in hip huggers while wearing a pair of dental-floss undies.
Meanwhile, activities were building for the baseball game scheduled that evening just two blocks down the street from here. That typically means that there would be an even larger influx of traffic both in and out of the area. That traffic added only a little more intensity to the already feverish pitch of horn-blowing, brake-jamming, yell-out-loud drivers inhabiting this side of the Allegheny River. It’s like having one or two extra French fries in a shopping bag full of them.
About 20 minutes into my sunbath, I heard a loud bang. It sounded like a car hitting into a wall at... let’s say.. 35 miles per hour, and, truthfully, that’s what it was . . . except that the car had not hit a wall, it had hit another car. It didn’t look like anyone was hurt badly, but the car was. The empty passenger’s seat was pressed firmly against the driver’s seat, a T-bone. Almost instantly sirens began to scream from two dif ferent directions. Then the flashing, red, lights appeared under the overpass as fire trucks and ambulances arrived.
It was the beginning of the Fourth of July weekend, and 600,000 extra people were about to descend on the “Burgh” for a major party. There would be hundreds of boats for the Regatta and tens of thousands of fireworks watchers coming to celebrate the creation of this amazing country. Wouldn’t it be nice to reflect with family and friends about what’s really important, and then to collectively decide to pay it forward, so that future generations will get to enjoy life, liberty and especially, the pursuit of happiness, too?
(Nick Jacobs, Windber, international director for SunStone Consulting, LLC is the author of the blog Healinghospitals.com.)
The pursuit of happiness
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