Sometimes life is just entertaining.
Thursday was one of those days. It started innocently enough. Work. Lunch. Work. Then it came time to go home.
If I am lucky, I can find a taxi to take me home. Otherwise I pile into a FX that goes in the direction of my house. A FX is like a multi-person taxi. You can check out a description I gave of it here. This mode of transportation is cheaper, but also doesn’t go right to my building. I have to get out and walk a couple blocks. Well on Thursday it was time to descend from the vehicle and begin my trek home. I called “para po!” to the driver and he pulled the car to a quick stop. I glanced out the window to make sure no bikers were coming (something I was not totally thorough in) and then opened the door. This is where my day got reeeeeeal interesting.
As I opened the door, a man on a bicycle rode directly into it. That’s right. I just performed one-half of those scenes you only see in bad comedies. Best I can tell (this all happened pretty fast), the door hit the bike pedal and sent the bike and the man flying to the ground. He was going pretty fast. Not only that, but the sidewalk had a row of intimidating metal pole thingys which the bicycle rider flew into, head-first. Probably not the end to the day he was looking for.
I jumped out asking him if he was ok, telling him I was so sorry, and wondering what the heck I was supposed to do. It quickly drew a crowd. Passersby, fellow bikers, and even two traffic cops who were standing nearby. Oh boy. One man who materialized kept telling me I needed to give the biker money. Slow down there, pal.
The FX driver got out, as well as the other passengers. To add to my inconveniencing of others, they had to find other transportation. As everyone jammered on in Tagalog and I caught about 1 in every 50 words, I was totally lost. Then the driver said “come with me”. I responded with “where are we going?” Cause white girl ain’t no fool. My mom told me never to get in a car with strangers. As it turns out, they wanted to take the bicyclist to the hospital and needed me to go too, along with one of the traffic cops. So we all piled in and I immediately called one of my filipina friends and asked her to come help. I sure needed it.
It was an interesting sight, I am sure, to see this white girl following a limping, sore Filipino in need of assistance. As we stood around waiting for my friend and for the guy to see a doctor, one of the security guards came up to talk to me. He was very nice and tried to put me at ease. I was feeling pretty terrible. Then he stated a question that was so important for the situation: “are you single?” Then he proceeded to say “Because he’s single; and him too!” I looked to one of the other guards he pointed to who broke into a wide grin; a wide gummy grin. Dude had no teeth. Despite the humor in the situation, I really was concerned about the guy, and also did not want to be taken advantage of because I was a foreigner. I had already been asked a couple times for money which I subtly dodged. Once my friend arrived and was able to translate for me, I agreed to help pay a portion of the medical bill (which was very cheap) and also my friend said it would be nice to give the injured a small amount to help cover his pain medicine. I agreed, we paid, I said again how sorry I was, and we left. Quite an eventful night. Don’t think I’ll be repeating that anytime soon. I’ll be the Über-sensitive girl who checks about 10 times before she opens the car door.
God protected everyone and taught me a valuable lesson in the process: if things ever go south with Clarence, there’s always two security guards available at Rizal Medical Center.
