It reminded me of the time my manager fell down into the basement. It also makes me think I must be neurodivergent. Yesterday we were helping my brother in New Jersey get some things in order in his house. He lives about an hour and a half from us and when the GPS showed us our options to get home we decided to go shunpiking. I find something atmospheric, and maybe a little haunted, about driving along roads next to a river. We crossed into Pennsylvania just north of Trenton and followed “River Road” home. This stretch of road, mostly highway 32, is almost impossibly quaint. I’d driven sections of it before, but not the whole stretch. It was a pleasant day but we’d just come off of a period of rain and high winds. The winds were still up, and have been gusting for about a week now.
After somewhere over an hour on this pleasant drive, we saw a motorcycle stopped in the road. I slowed way down, unsure of what I was seeing (this starts the neurodivergent part), and I saw a man staggering across the road to lay down on the berm. I could see branches on the road. Unsure what to do, I pulled up next to him and offered to call 911 (my wife actually suggested that, since I didn’t know what to do. She’s better in a crisis than me.). By then the people in the cars behind us had gotten out and one of them indicated they had medical training and that help was on the way. The man indicated he’d been driving his motorcycle and the branch came down on him, or right in front of him—he was pretty dazed and confused. Not wanting to throw my own ignorance and ineptitude into the mix, I pulled over, and my wife and I got out of the car and started clearing branches from the road. Kay and I, and by now others, had pretty much cleared the road and, unsure what to do, and since there were many people attending the man, I drove off.
That incident made me very reflective. When I worked at Ritz Camera in Brookline, Massachusetts, one day my manager didn’t see that the cellar door (inside the store) was open. We heard a scream and a thud and I ran to the door and pulled it back open. The door had to be held by a hook and eyelet being joined and while I was trying to do that, one of my coworkers brushed past and down the stairs to help our manager. Later, my co-worker ribbed me for being more concerned about the door than the person. I was actually trying to help our manager, but in my mind, going down the stairs only to have the door fall on my head made no sense. It turned out the manager was fine; a trip to the ER showed nothing seriously wrong with her. I don’t know about that man by the side of the road. I was only glad that, as my wife noted, so many people had stopped to help. I just hope he, like my manager, was okay.
