THWOMP.

There’s this parking garage over on 9th street in the East Village, right in between 2nd Avenue and Stuyvesant. It looks just like all the other garages in the neighborhood, until you happen to glance over from the other side of the street. That’s when you realize that this is one of those super garages that actually takes up an entire building and that it actually might be dangerous.

From across the street you can see piles of cars in one of those weird auto-stacking/parking machines up on the roof, where a whole bunch of SUVs are sort of dangling over the building’s edge. This scares me a little, and I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I've gotten into a habit of walking along the opposite side of the street.

But believe it or not, this isn’t about my neurotic and irrational behavior. It’s about this:

Let’s say one of those cars just happened to slip off, fall, and crash right on top of you. Now there’s no question about survival because you’d absolutely die. What I’m curious about is that tiny little moment right before you die, just as the car is crushing your fragile body. In that moment, amidst all the strange and painful neural zapping going through your brain, do you think you'd be able to make some sense of the situation?

I’ve thought about it, and here’s a sequential list of the thoughts that would probably go through my brain:

1) WHAT’S GOING ON?
2) I FEEL PAIN.
3) SOMETHING’S PUSHING ME DOWN TOWARD THE GROUND?
4) SOMETHING’S CRUSHING ME!
5) SOMETHING’S FALLING ON ME FROM ABOVE!
6) I MIGHT DIE FROM THIS.
7) IS THIS A CAR?
8) A CAR IS FALLING ON ME?
9) I BET THIS IS ONE OF THOSE CARS FROM THE ROOF!
10) I KNEW THAT GARAGE WAS DANGEROUS.
11) I SHOULD HAVE WALKED ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET.
12) IS THIS AN ACCURATE EXAMPLE OF IRONY?

How far you get on this list is probably some determinant of how smart you are or how fast your brain works. I like to think I could make it up to #7, but that’s just ‘cause I’ve thought about it too much. Most people would probably make it to #5 tops, provided they can get passed #2, which probably persists throughout the rest of the list I bet.