City life brings surprises every time I leave our apartment. But our street reversal this past week not only brought surprises but almost took my life.

Due to massive L-train station destruction/construction projects just west of us, our one-way street north reversed flow this week to one-way south. Since I drive very little, I thought this wouldn’t concern me much.

I was wrong.

We were going out the other day, my husband driving, and I told him he could get the car, and I’d be down in a minute. Oh, that no longer works, he told me, because he can’t park in front of the building anymore to wait. Now that the street goes the other way, there’s no place for him to wait. So, drastic circumstances, I have to make sure I’m down there seconds after he leaves to get the car.

I can live with that, of course, but not with what happened next. We headed south on our new south-bound street and were almost to the corner when a car flew around the corner going north, barely missing us; the driver, however, had time to pull us an awful face and give us the finger as if, What are you stupid people doing here, anyway?

Clearly, he had not noticed the new one-way sign  pointing south and raced into our street out of habit. I looked behind us to see when he would catch on and feel foolish for his finger action; it wasn’t long until I watched him have to u-turn it to park facing south in front of our building.

I don’t know if he felt foolish or not. I just hope he was thankful he didn’t annihilate a couple of older folks. I was.

And I hope he’s not my new neighbor, or I’ll have to say, We almost met before!