Its not every day that a complete stranger dives head first
into the concrete that lies before you. Walking home in my post work daze last
week, a 60 something year old took a tumble that saw him lying face down before
me on Foveaux St. For some
reason I thought he had died on the spot. How unfortunate that it was at my
feet.
I fumbled for my iPhone while my colleague attended to the
dead man. Naturally, in a crisis situation my phone wouldn’t work. Somehow the
Optus connection wasn’t connecting, so I scored myself a big fat fail on
providing emergency assistance in a crisis situation. In my second attempt to
help, I decided it was extremely dangerous that he was lying on the road, so I
decided to act as a human shield between the oncoming traffic and the dead man.
Ironic seeing as he was already dead and there wasn’t too much damage they
could possibly do. Internally I congratulated myself on choosing the orange
sweater that day, a suitable colour for a human shield.
As the scene started to attract a nice crowd, I also
pondered whether it was poor taste to make friends out of such an incident. I
mean, these were the caring, proactive types I would like in my life anyway.
Does it matter how I recruit them? My moment of heroism was rudely interrupted
when death started to stir and my corpse woke up. Turns out he had fallen
straight onto his head and knocked himself out cold. Funny that, it never
occurred to me that he had passed out. The ambulance arrived and it seemed the
right time to make a quiet escape. As I snuck off, stage left I heard him
mutter “I did have a few drinks”. “That’s ok”, said the gay florist “at least
you won’t feel anything!” 
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