I was in London recently and I rode the Underground a lot. One day, my wife and I were walking through one of the many tunnels down there, turned a corner and heard a scream.
About halfway up the escalator, there was a middle-aged woman who somehow had fallen backwards and was laying flat on her back, sliding downward toward my wife and myself.
The escalators in London are much longer than the ones in the subways of NYC and appear to be steeper as well. The woman was in a very precarious position and I saw her slipping down the escalator steps before a nearby woman grabbed her, stopping her fall.
Another woman near us hit a button that stopped the escalator from moving, but the fallen woman was still panicked, as any of us would be. I raced up the escalator and tried to calm her. She was trying to step forward uphill while lying on her back, but she just did not have the leverage or a core made of steel.
I told her to take a step down to get her feet under her, and then I pushed her up. I told her I was trying to help which is why my hands were on her back.
Luckily, the fallen woman was not too big and I was able to push her upright relatively easily. I told her I would keep my hands on her back until she was settled and slowly, she calmed down. By then, someone had called the station transit person and he was next to us with a walkie-talkie.
He asked the woman to walk down but she wanted to walk up. So that’s what we all did, making sure she was steady on her feet and not about to fall again. When we got to the top, she thanked everyone. I smiled and asked if she was all right and we were on our way. She had a rolling suitcase with her and I’d bet that, wherever she was from, she was not used to taking an escalator. I’ve seen it before in NY and also have witnessed people baffled by revolving doors, not knowing when to get in or when to jump out.
That’s kind of funny but sliding backwards and downhill on a up escalator is decidedly NOT funny. It would have been very easy for this woman to get her hair caught in the steps.
As we hit the streets of London, we talked about this accident and I wondered to myself if this were a metaphor for life. Had I ever metaphorically found myself in the same position as the falling woman, feeling stunned and helpless?
I thought about it. I did feel exactly that way when I was in a car accident last year. I saw it coming in the final seconds before the crash, and yes, I was stunned and helpless. But it wasn’t metaphorical. It was real, and I broke 2 ribs and had a fractured sternum.
The only other time I can recall feeling that way is when my father died suddenly from a heart attack. It also had happened in the 1990s to a friend of mine. The loss of two lives was real but, in the weeks after their deaths, I walked around with that feeling of helplessness long after the actual event. It was metaphorical angst.
Another example happened in the late ‘90s during the go-go period of tech stocks. Before they crashed, I had made almost $1 million on a single stock. Unheard of for me. I watched my gains rise to $900k and I swore to myself I’d sell when it hit $1 million.
It never did and I held on while the stock sank. I nearly rode it all the way down but shook myself awake in time for a six-figure gain. It was nowhere near $900k and was the dumbest financial move I even made. The silver lining was that I never made that mistake again.
Holding that stock, I felt stunned and helpless to sell. I was mesmerized, hypnotized and yes, greedy. Ugh.
Has something like this happened to you?