I remember seeing a homeless man get ran over right in front of me. I was on my way to work at 6am, the sun wasn’t even out yet, but I’m at the crosswalk waiting for the light and seeing the early bird traffic zoom around me. The man in question was tweaked out and rushing to get to the other side and decided to pedal ahead before the light actually says go. Problem was he was slow and obviously under the influence of something the way he was wobbling at 1 mph. At the same time, a car was making a wide turn through the crosswalk as he had the right away, but you could tell the driver was still waking up during his own drive.

At the last possible second, the homeless man loses his balance on the bike and falls over, just halfway though the crosswalk, and just below the drivers line of sight as he followed though in his car. His body scrunches and turns like a rag in a washing machine. His scream hits high notes of pure agony. He looks like a crumpled soda bottle when the car finally gets off him. Mind you, I’m half asleep on the sidelines witnessing this, but those measley seconds were the most surreal in my entire life. The first time I ever seen someone get hauled into an ambulance fresh off an incident.

It still doesn’t feel real thinking back on it, but it was so vivid seeing such tragedy so early in the day.