so....
So I was tanked one day walking around that movie theater on Third Avenue and 11th street just fucking around, trying to get lost. It was around 6pm and I was well hammered. So I was looking at some poster when out of the corner of my eye I saw THIS guy get hit by a fucking car. He got swept right onto the hood and rolled across it like one of the Dukes of Hazzard had an aneurysm mid-slide and just layed on the hood twitching. The only thing I could think at the time was “Wow, that’s exactly how movies have trained me to expect that to sound. Bravo Hollywood, you nailed it. It sounded like you threw a big bag of garbage against a wall and it smashed flat from the impact, then slid down onto the ground. "
So anyways, he rolls off the hood and a few seconds later a crowd is surrounding him and the car. The two kids that were driving are being considerate as hell for purveyors of vehicular assault and saying that he should really wait for the ambulance he seems really hurt and so on and so on. To the surrounding crowd, myself included, he looked no worse for wear just a little ruffled. His pants were a little dirty but for the most part he seemed all right. He kept bending his legs and saying he was fine. Then he turned to pacify the whole crowd by giving a big healthy grin showing that he was gonna be A-OK. The only trouble was the fact that he only had one tooth in his head. So the smile came off a little less bright than everyone was hoping for.
Me being drunk and wanting to bond with my fellow rubber-necking swine, I shouted out “The real tragedy, you see, is that he used to have a perfect smile!”
Silence from the crowd.
One second passes (no one says a fucking word.)
Two seconds pass (still silent. I hear my drunken heart in my throat, thinking that this whole crowd may now turn on me for taunting someone who just got hit by a car and may or may not be just some poor man down on his luck, who got sideswiped and is in shock and now has some asshole making fun of his experience with any level of professional dentistry.)
Three seconds- some girl on the other side of the 40 or 50 people loses her shit laughing. Like LOSES HER MIND LAUGHING.
So I’m thinking immediately, thank god I’m not getting lynched, and hey lets go pick up this girl that finds assholes funny. I look up, make eye contact, and she immediately in a panic, makes out with the guy next to her as a sign that maybe the loud drunk should just stay where he is and leave her alone. I got the message pretty quick.
The weird thing? When I looked back to the hobo, he was gone. No one knew where he was, not the cops, not the ambulance that just pulled up and is parking, not the two kids that hit him.
Then a few weeks ago I saw him eating ice cream.
With his one tooth proudly on display.
(100 percent unembellished.)
