My Latest Attempt

4 Views from Running Errands in Winter

1) There was the indifferent, comely cashier at Giant who smiled after I first smiled at her. When taking my groceries, I glanced down and saw the shiny copper glint of a penny on the dingy floor of the express aisle.

2) There were the two very unlucky red delicious apples resting amid the squalid slush of the parking lot as I exited the store. One was already smashed, the other waiting for the inevitable.

3) There was the abandoned late model sedan blocking traffic in the middle lane after the New Hampshire Avenue exit inside the Beltway with its driver’s side door wide open. As I passed by, I could only see a winter coat left sprawled like a dead body across the front seat.

4) There was the driver of a grey SUV who pulled out in front of me from Quebec Street to go south on New Hampshire Avenue never even looking in my direction as I continued to travel north in the far left lane. I watched with disbelief and thought how hitting it would probably kill the woman behind the steering wheel; a fact that never caused me for a moment to slow down—luck alone saved us from what seemed inevitable.

~ RWA, 1961 -
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