WOW! So I am clearly not keeping up with my monthly update schedule. Grad school is taking over my life a little more than I expected. I love it, but hate it, all at the same time. And I have so many stories from Senegalia; I need to get to telling them before they become stale. Teehee. Let's get started:
Several, several, several weeks ago my sister and I were out running errands in our fun little car. It was a great day, nice and sunny, not to hot and not to cold. Everything was normal until there was a frighteningly loud thud from the driver's side of the car and a very startled looking man somehow appeared smashed against my wind sheild. The whole thing lasted only a few seconds, but was the scariest event to have ever happened to me since I moved to the Big City. The only thought in my mind at that point was I just hit a biker and killed him. OH MY GOSH!!!
I promptly pulled over and managed to get out of the car. At this point, both my sister and I were trembling. I literally thought I was going to walk over to a tangled, bloody mess in the middle of the street. "That biker just rode straight into that car!" I heard a passerby say, but this detail didn't really register with me. All I could think was I had seriously injured an innocent person.
"Sir! Sir! Are you okay?!?! Just stay where you are, I'm going to call an ambulance," I told the man sitting in the street next to his bike.
"Yeah stay down, wait for an ambulance to come, man," came from another by-stander.
In the time it took me to call the ambulance and figure out my location, the biker promptly stood up and rode away. YES!!! You read that correctly. HE LEFT!!! At this point, I'm even more confused than ever. I just finished calling an ambulance to help this poor man and he's gone.
"He's alright, don't worry about it. You should just head out too," a third by-stander told me.
"Are you sure he's okay? How do you know?"
"He's fine, don't worry about it. Just go on."
Being confused and terrified all at once is a very strange emotion. I called 911 again to cancel the ambulance. The responder on the other end of the line was just as confused as I.
"Did someone take him to the hospital? Did you get his name or contact information? He just left?" All I could answer was "I don't know". The responder recommended I still wait for the police to arrive so tha I could file a formal report. I took their advice. My sister and I waited what seemed like HOURS for the cop to arrive. I'm sure that since the injured party left, the accident was not at the top of the priority queue for the police department.
The cop was a very nice man. He explained to me that he had seen at least two other accidents of this nature in this same area; cyclists driving on the wrong side of the road, or running traffic lights, and hitting cars. They flee the scene because they know it's their fault and should be held accountable for the damage they caused. In my case, a few scratches on the bumper and a huge dent, Grrrr. The police report was written and it took longer than it should have, but Mr. Cop was super friendly the whole time. He did a great job of disapating my tension with his down to earth style. After the report, we ended the conversation like this:
"You look like a bright girl, and you said you're in grad school right. Well, let me ask you this question. I've asked this to so many people - nurses, doctors, everybody - and only a couple have gotten it right."
"Sure." In my head, I'm thinking, OH NO! I just started grad school. I couldn't tell you the difference between bacterial secretion systems and the tyrosine signaling pathway. He's gonna ask me something so hard and Imma look so stupid!
"What does DNA stand for? Not what it does or what it is, but what does it stand for?"
I almost passed out in my relief that I could actually answer this. "Deoxyribonucleic acid."
"That's exactly right. Everyone I talk to knows what it is and what it does, but how come they don't know what it stands for!"
I giggle in agreement
"Alright now, you have a good day and stay safe."
How does a day start with being hit by a biker and end in DNA? Only in Senegalia.
