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 49 november 8, 1997 “I’m really sorry. I never should have opened the door without looking. . . . I was lost in thought. I wasn’t thinking.” I was riding my bike not long ago along a road in the town where I live, braced by a clear sunny day with enough edge to it, in the form of cool weather, to make me feel especially glad that I could enjoy myself this way in a quiet New England setting. I was on my way to the post office. Not far from my destination, I began to slow down—and a good thing I did. A car door was suddenly flung open. I reflexively squeezed my handbrakes tight, only to find myself unavoidably colliding with the door. In no time I was on the road, the bike crashing down beside me. Supineontheasphalt,Ihadadelightfulviewofthesky.Myeyecaught sight of a tree I’d passed for years and not noticed. Now it seemed like a handsome umbrella shielding the nearby sidewalk and cars. Abruptly I heard a voice, then saw its owner, a man who had been sitting in his car and decided to take leave of it just as I was approaching the part of the road where he was parked. I heard, “Oh, I’m so sorry—are you all right?” By then I was quite ready to test my limbs, my state of physical being. I was, as the expression goes, gathering myself together. I could use my legs and arms and torso in such a way that, thank God, I was able to stand up, 50  even grab hold of my bike and stand it up. I took the two of us, my bike and me, to the safety of the sidewalk. Some considerate and, no doubt, alarmeddriverswhohadstoppedintheirtracksnowgratefullyproceeded. I was neurologically and musculo-skeletally intact, or so it seemed— the doctor in me joining hands with the plain old human being in a second’s smile of relief. Still, I felt vulnerable and sore (maybe in several senses of that word). I somehow didn’t care whether I got to the post office. The couch in my study at home crossed my mind. I wanted to be there, dozing, to be miraculously transported there—enough of this bicycle business! I believe that, already, my back was telling me that it was going to commemorate this event, register pain, turn me into someone who has to watch his every move. Meanwhile,asIstoodtheretryingtogetmyselfbackintotheswingof things,themanI’dseenhoveringoverme—whohadpushedopentheleft frontdoorofhisSeries5BMWrightintimeformetogreetitheadonand meet its resistance, to which I quickly gave way in surrender—now stood before me, looking me up and down, staring at my bike. That became, in fact, the object of his solicitude: “Is it all right? Will it take you home, do you think?” I nodded; I couldn’t muster the one affirmative word necessary. I moved the bike, though, back and forth—to tell by showing. Thencamemyturnforthisfellow’sshowofinterest:“Ihopeyou’reOK.”I hadnotimetoanswer—morecameforth:“I’mreallysorry.Inevershould have opened the door without looking.” Another very brief pause. Then: “I was lost in thought. I wasn’t thinking. . . .” At once the memory of my dear, English-born father came to my mind, with his habit of spotting inconsistencies in the spoken word, not to mention grammatical errors. He was a polite fellow, but he would have eventually remarked to me, had he been there, that this owner of a quite  51 fineautomobile,wholivedinacomfortabletown(andwhowasdressedin a suit and shirt and tie that looked as if they’d only recently been housed at Brooks Brothers) can’t have everything. “Bobby,” my dad would have said, “you can’t be ‘lost in thought’ and ‘not thinking’ at the same time.” My mom and later my wife, Jane, and even later our three sons, as they got older, would have had the necessary gumption, thank God, to respond, to tell him that logic doesn’t always work as a means of approaching human affairs. For (as in this instance) one can most certainly be quite consumed by one’s private thoughts, hence oblivious (in one’s “thinking” life as a responsible citizen) to what was happening nearby and, so, unprepared to take a thoroughly necessary kind of action. Anyway, my reverie over, I told this man that I was sorry too—sorry I’d come to that spot when I did, sorry I’d gotten me and my bike into this situation. Then a half-meant gesture of politeness on my part: “Is your car...

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