A Night On The Town

Last night Colleen and I headed to downtown Denver for a rare night on the town. We planned to go to the historic Mayan Theater to see a satirical movie about a dysfunctional family ("Little Miss Sunshine"). The Mayan has three theaters, but only one ticket window, so one of the expectations is a long line outside the theater. Colleen offered to get out of the car and stand in line while I looked for a parking space.

Fifteen minutes later I arrived at the theater, and noticed that there had been an auto accident right next to the theater. A man had attempted to jaywalk or run across the street instead of at the appropriate crosswalk, where he would have had to wait for the light to turn green! The car he was trying to beat did not see him, and hit him head on, the result of which was the shattering of the car windshield and several of the man's major bones. A doctor was in line at the theater, and he went over and checked the man briefly, and immediately came back to the line and announced, "He has a pulse." I am pretty sure the doctor was waiting in line to see Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," so obviously that would take precedence over spending more than a few seconds with the unsuccessful jayrunner.

The driver of the car was a very tall twenty-something blonde guy with braided hair. His passenger was a younger black woman. It was the passenger side window that was shattered. Colleen noticed that the young black woman seemed to be distressed and perhaps traumatized (her companion was ignoring her completely while talking on a cell phone), so she went over to comfort her. The young woman was sure that she and her companion would be deemed at fault. Over and over she said,"We didn't do anything wrong," or "We weren't speeding." Colleen comforted her and talked with her, reassuring her that there were many witnesses. Nevertheless, the woman continued to be certain that she and her companion would be held responsible. A black woman came over to the car. Colleen met her, then introduced her to the woman. The woman then broke down and let out a torrent of sobs, feeling safer now with the black woman to express her fears that she would somehow be held responsible for the behavior of the idiot jayrunner.

The first responders came and took the guy to the hospital. No one from the ambulance paid any attention to the young woman. The police arrived and talked with the two people who had been in the car. The officer, to his credit, saw that the woman was traumatized, and called for an ambulance for her. As a matter of fact, she had just been released from a hospital emergency room, where she had gone to get treatment for a very sore throat. She was taken away in the second ambulance just as the theater posted a sign announcing that our movie was "Sold Out."

I remembered that Al Gore was in Denver signing copies of his book with the same title as the movie, and said to Colleen, "Let's go listen to him speak: I can write about it in the blog!" We hurried over to the wonderful Tattered Cover bookstore, but were too late to hear the inventor of the internet.

So, we ended the evening by going to our favorite Denver restaurant, The Wynkoop, which is one of several Denver resturants owned by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.