Strange Days Indeed!

I was nearly killed or injured last night while I was waiting for the bus [now, how's THAT for an opening sentence?]. Oddly enough, this is one of those true stories that may pop up amidst all the stuff I THINK is true that turns out to be made up in my brain.(There were several other witnesses to this, so I know it happened.)

I was at the Niagara Falls bus station, standing outside, enjoying the unusually mild weather we've been having. Suddenly, a car screeched up to the station entrance. A man got out of one of the passenger doors, in the middle of a serious argument with someone inside the vehicle [the driver, as it turns out]. It had something to do with his moving out of his girlfriend's apartment after two years. I, along with the others outside, heard the man tell his apparent ex that she could keep his things. Her responses, though probably audible to the man, were muffled and unclear to the rest of us. Finally, he gave her a suggestion about what she could do to express her feelings [As his language was rather strong, I'll let you fill in this blank].

He walked over to us, and started to explain his version of events. Just as he did so, we all heard a screech. We looked up to see the car coming at all of us at a high rate of speed! No horn, no nothing! Just two-thousand-odd pounds of car, heading right for the group of us outside the building, and picking up speed as she did so! She swerved to try and hit him, almost hitting an innocent bystander in the process, and just missing the station building. She then proceeded to chase him down a small grass embankment, across a usually busy street [miraculously, there was no traffic just at that moment], before giving up the pursuit in a parking lot across the way.

(In the interest of accuracy, when she swerved right to hit her former boyfriend, I'd jumped left, and was really in little or no danger.) That being noted, it took all our hearts a few minutes to resume normal operations. Several people, including an NFTA employee who was inside, called the police. When they arrived, the innocent bystander and former boyfriend both declined to press charges. The un-hitched male was philosophical, noting that the things he'd left at her apartment were just "material goods", and could be replaced. The bystander was strangely calm about the whole thing [then again, he'd just rented, among other things, the un-rated version of the horror flick "Pulse". This may have set him up for an even better viewing experience...].

If only all innocent bystanders could have such happy results! Unfortunately, "innocent bystander" has become an all-too-frequent synonym for "victim". In that spirit, I direct you to our link, http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20070104/1019735.asp , which connects to an article in the "Buffalo News" of January 4th, 2007. It pointed out the disturbing fact that almost 20 % of Buffalo's homicide victims last year were innocent bystanders [their definition, quite reasonably I think, included cashiers, taxi drivers, and delivery people killed while performing their jobs.].

Some people may feel an article like this, heavy on morbid reminiscences and light on solution, comes off as nothing more than hand-wringing. But sometimes, the first step to cure a disease is an unblinking look at the illness...

-Mike Riley