Old White Lady Here

(Ready to Ruin Your Day)

Bernett Belgraier

I nearly died twice in the past two years — at least, that's how I see it — in collisions with out-of-control, "micromobility" vehicles.

After each incident, I fixated on the outcome had I moved a fraction of an inch this way or that, a milli-second before. How much worse would it have been than having to get up off the ground, aching, shaking, bleeding, watching the hematomas form under my skin, unable to bend my knees for a month, hardly able to sit on the toilet?

E-bikes, e-scooters, unicycles, traditional bikes, and foot-pedaled scooters now routinely imperil pedestrians. Unlike some poor souls, I was fortunate to have recovered from my injuries. I didn't take action against my perpetrators of pain. What's the point? I'm sure that they had no insurance, no money. Instead, I praised a God I wasn't raised to believe in for my health insurance and the medical people in my family. Entitled! Lucky!

This danger, woven into the tapestry of New York City life, is ho-hum, expected even, as much a clause of the city living contract as scaffolding, the aroma of marijuana, alternate side of the street parking, dog crap, scurrying rats, and locking up your local pharmacy to resemble a fort.

I asked one of my offending cyclists: Must you move at such speed? He was worse off than me. He refused an ambulance, and I insisted he sit with me to make sure he didn't pedal away with some brain injury. (He later texted me from the ER, where he'd, of course, biked.) But, to my question, he answered: Yes. That's just the way I travel. 

These days, outside my apartment, I carry around a sort of PTSD. I flinch when I detect movement darting out of the corners of my eyes and hold as suspect whatever is rolling along, agonizing over whether I can trust someone else's judgment. I freeze at metal, rubber, and wheels barreling toward me with unendurable velocity, unsure where to place my body to get out of harm's way. Then, my skin bristles as they whisk past me with barely a hair's distance between us, almost — sometimes actually —  grazing me. How close I came, so many times since that last one, nearly two years ago, to disaster number three. And you know what they say about three strikes.   

For committed city pedestrians, it no longer matters where you are or that you perambulate by the rules. Honestly, what rules? Red lights. Green lights. With traffic, against traffic. East, west, north, south. Crosswalk, sidewalk, and the haven that was the park. Our dominion is gone.

I was walking in northern Riverside Park the other day when I veered slightly to my left. Immediately, I was almost brushed on that side by a fast pedal scooter, not a child's lightweight device, but a heavy-duty adult one. Its speed produced a breeze as it zoomed by. Again, my heart and breathing accelerated. I was overdue: It's been months since my last near-miss occurred on a Broadway sidewalk (with a food delivery e-bike).

The terminus that the Riverside scooter would encounter on this path — beyond which he'd be unable to ride — was the 125th Street tennis courts. I gathered myself on a bench; I didn't know it then, but I was making a decision. When I stood up, I continued to the tennis courts.

Sandwiched between the courts and the hub of public restrooms, I found a guy who resembled the speed demon. I noted that bulging knapsack on the ground to my right; a heavy-duty scooter was leaning against the restroom wall. 

"That your scooter?" I asked.

Yes, he confirmed. 

I asked if he realized he'd nearly run into me. 

He brusquely announced he was on the phone. 

I waited. And waited. He meandered around, appearing to talk on his phone (who knows if he was). I kept him in sight and let him see I wasn't leaving. I also changed my position when he moved to the other side of the restrooms.  

He got off the phone, a real sturdy guy, and approached me, probably intending to appear menacing. Snottily, he asked, "You gotta a problem?"

When I repeated my issue, I was berated as "old" (I'm 66 and have let my hair gray) and "white." In his estimation, I was undeservedly ascended and entirely unworthy of his giving me the time of day. He rhetorically asked why it's "old white ladies" like me who "complain" and "get in people's faces." 

He claimed that he'd sped up to pass me as I shifted to my left on the path.

I asked if he couldn't have vocally warned me or slowed down. Did he recognize that since he was behind me, where I couldn't see him, he'd held a distinct advantage over me?

To every point I submitted, he laughed contemptuously, taking delight in asserting he was neither impelled nor compelled where I was concerned. He found me ridiculous, dumping upon me his disdain. It was an attitudinal spitting, a verbal dry heave.

His sentences, constructed of variegated syntax, revolved around three pillars to which he repeatedly returned: I shouldn't "bother" him; I should "mind" my "own business," and I should "get on" with my "day." 

I'll never know if his scorn was genuine or manufactured as a response to my having had the nerve (and perhaps naivete) to track him down. Faux outrage is a thing these days.  

It took me some time to process that his strategy was to invalidate me. Well, to dehumanize me, most especially the more I insisted that my well-being on a shared path mattered. And it was even more time after that that I grasped his attempts to age- and race-bait me — another thing these days — and I didn't capitulate. I never reacted to it. And I wondered if that bothered him.

I know sociopathy has always been with us. But it feels particularly mournful that it's now infected those retreats where New Yorkers seek refuge daily: the greenway that is our backyard, our coveted grassy spot, our precious water-adjacent go-to.

And, yes, finally, came my ultimate reconciliation: I am an old white lady now.