Mary Oliver

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?"









Wednesday, January 13, 2010

A Cowl in New York City

So you want the story of the cowl that almost killed me? Well, last February I flew to New York City to visit my oldest daughter, M1. I knew that it was really cold up there so I decided the week before I went that I needed to knit a cowl to help me keep warm. I looked at some patterns but for some reason decided that all I needed to do was knit a tube. A big tube. I thought if I made it big enough, I could pull it up over my head and use it as a quasi-hat/cowl. Well that sucker was warm alright. Even though the temperatures never made it out of the twenties, my neck was good and warm. Sweaty warm. Not particularly stylish, but that's never been a big concern of mine.

So my daughter, her boyfriend, and I are walking all over Greenwich Village and I'm loving life. Looking around, taking pictures, and just generally doing the wide-eyed tourist routine, when all of a sudden, as we were crossing a street, I tripped and fell. This is a street in New York City, mind you. I tripped, fell, and my cowl shot up over my head, making me sightless. With the light getting ready to change. I was laying in the street in New York City with a cowl over my head rendering me blind, with traffic getting ready to take off and my daughter on the other side, because she thought I was still with her. Luckily she realized what had happened, came back into the street, helped me up, and led me to the curb to recover, before the traffic ran over me.

It was funny later. Much later.

I frogged that sucker.

4 comments:

  1. Well that's frightening. I'd have frogged it, too!

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  2. Of course, Stephen thinks I'm risking bad karma by using it for a scarf but I don't think so. It's quite lovely as a scarf. Better behaved, too!

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  3. Ooh. Bad scarf karma. I'm thinking of Isadora Duncan and her Bugatti. But since I'm sure you don't own a Bugatti (do you?), you should be much happier with the scarf-from-frogged-cowl.

    That story was pretty funny in the telling but I'm sure it was really frightening at the time.

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  4. oh lord! funny later, yes--much much later.

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