We took Grandpa and Auntie Josie on the metro today and I was sure to explain how to use the tickets properly. Put the ticket in, go through the turnstile, take your ticket, hold onto it because you will need it later to exit the metro…that sort of thing. They were very good pupils and followed my instructions to a tee.
When we were exiting the metro station to come home, though, Josie and Rachel had a little misadventure.
Andrew had exited first—we had caught up with some of the BYU students that are here with study abroad and he was chatting to them about finding apartments and so forth. My dad exited second. Josie, who was carrying Rachel, was next in line, and I was bringing up the rear with Miriam while talking on my cell phone to a friend.
No one is exactly sure how it happened, but somehow—be it by someone’s pocket or Rachel’s shoe—the turnstile awkwardly jammed against Rachel and Josie and they were unable to complete a graceful exit.
Josie put her ticket in the machine to release the bar and then proceeded to walk through before getting stuck. She had almost finished walking through when she jerked to a stop and started going backwards. Then she flipped—head over heels—over the bar, twisting midair to harbour Rachel from impact, taking the brunt of the fall on her left shoulder and back.
Workers on the other side of the turnstile—and my dad—rushed to help the girls off the ground while I just stared with wide eyes, stammering into the phone, from the other side.
“Yeah…I can be there at…oh, hey! Yikes… What? Oh. My sister just…wow. Ummm…she’s okay. Yeah. I’ll just be there at four.”
Rachel started screaming for me and ran back under the turnstile so that I could comfort her and I hung up the phone.
Josie had tears in her eyes but I think it was from more from laughing than from crying. We were all busting up.
One BYU student, Jake, said this, “I turned around and there were just…legs in the air…”
Yeah. That about sums it up.
It thought that only happened in the movies.
ReplyDelete