That was my lesson for the day…

I had a very important meeting this morning and I went to work looking really sharp, but more on the feminine side, with high heels and a dress.  After my meeting, I went out for lunch and as I was leaving the place, I fell flat on my face while going down a couple of steps. My coffee went flying one way, my purse the other way and both shoes came off my feet.  All of this while I was desperately trying to protect my face and fall in a lady-like fashion, without showing too much.

Everything happened so fast.  I could not immediately stand up and I was still sitting on the sidewalk in pain, blood coming out of my knee, when I realized that there were a lot of people around me.  I heard someone asking me if I was OK, that I needed to sit down and I felt a chair placed behind me. Somehow, I was sitting on that chair looking at my legs to assess the damage. Someone else asked me if it was coffee that I was drinking,  I answered yes, wondering why he was asking me that question. The guy who gave me the chair was with his wife, she came over and told me that she was going to get me some ice and a band-aid, and she disappeared before I could say anything.  A young lady came out of nowhere and offered me a band-aid. She was probably in her early 20’s.  She said: I found this in my bag, you can have it. I smiled at her and said thank you.

I cleaned up my wound as much as I could and put on the band-aid, still sitting on that chair in the middle of the sidewalk. I looked around to see if that first lady was coming back with the ice because I wanted to thank her.  I waited for a few seconds, that’s when I realized that the guy who had asked me what I was drinking, was coming back with another cup of coffee to replace mine which was all over the sidewalk. I was really moved, I had never seen those people before and I would probably never see them again. Or maybe they had seen me before but I was always too busy to notice them.  Sometimes we are not indifferent, we are just too busy. We need to slow down and take the time to look around us and realize that we live in a city full of people just like us. I was about to leave when I saw that first lady coming towards me with a cup of ice, some alcohol and a large band-aid.  She gave me all the instructions on how to take care of my wound, I thanked her, I thanked them all and went on my way back to work.

My knee was hurting but I felt so happy for some reason.  People in the city are not as indifferent as we think. And we, professional women, are trying so hard not to show our vulnerable side… but for a few minutes, there on that sidewalk, I was just a woman hurt, a woman with everything that this word implies.  Once in a while every woman needs to be fragile and vulnerable, as long as we don’t overdo it…

…and that was my lesson for the day.