What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

A calm Saturday morning the phone rings. I should have know that it was going to be a strange Saturday right from the start. No one dares to call me on a Saturday, much less in the morning. Sleeping all weekend is one of the biggest indulgences for my otherwise plain and somewhat repetitive New York life.

I pick the phone and it's my college buddy Ed who lives a block down from my place. He finally has some time off from his crazy rotations and wants to go to a free concert in Central Park. I get out of bed trying to make my voice sound as awake as possible while he goes on about how famous this guy is and how big an event the concert is going to be. Somehow either because I have not seen him in a while or because I am too sleepy to say no, I say yes.

We take our sweet old time to get here and when we finally reach the site of the summer concert, the place is already packed and the gates are closed. We watch the hundreds of people still in line wondering what they're waiting for since it looks like no one is really going to leave the concert until it is over.

There are literally hundreds of people around the concert stage all on blankets, eating, chatting, drinking, getting a tan and being New York style fabulous and all. Maybe it is just me but taking a stroll in Central Park in the summer is like taking a trip over to the meat market, and a very depressing one at that. These people obviously were spending too much time between going to the gym and roasting on a regular basis in the solarium. There was also the remote yet viable possibility of these people belonging to another race, another species, perhaps another planet.

Anyhow, as we went through the crowd, Ed and I spotted one of those large volcanic rocks that have been scattered all over Central Park. It had all the characteristics of a strategic spot, good sound, lots of people walking by, yet providing isolation from the crowd's madness. In New York you can never really hope to the first person to find a good spot.

You learn this fast, and instead hope that you're not the last person to find the good spot. The rocks was already half covered with yuppies, students, and other strange New York types that I do not yet have names for. The concert started and Ed and I both listened to the bands and carried on a conversation about Ed's latest dating experiences. All seemed well.

Then without a warning, a saw a squirrel (aka tree rat) run towards our rock. At first I was a little puzzled yet I did not take full notice of the squirrel running like mad in our direction. Squirrels are neurotic animals, it is normal for them to freak out at the drop of a leaf so everything seemed typical so far. Soon the squirrel was climbing our rock and making its way to the left side of the rock where a bunch of incense burning, cool looking dudes and gals were rocking to the beat of the music. Let me tell ya, all those laid back and cool dudes jumped 3 feet up in the air when they saw the squirrel run towards them. What's worse is, the squirrel took much offense at this strong reaction and started to run in the opposite direction. It ran into another blanket full of people who strangely reacted to it like they have never seen a squirrel in their whole lives. So this continued much like a particle accelerator, until the squirrel was literally running all over the rock at the speed of light (ok so he was not about to engage in time travel but you know what I mean, it was no longer a squirrel running, it was blur). Next thing I know before I could move the squirrel was running towards us. I decided that my best best was to stay calm and statitionary since a moving object was more confusing to the squirrel which was in a mad rage by now. Strangely enough this turned out to be the worst choice because the squirrel kept running and running and rammed into my left ankle head first. I swear I felt his wet mouth on my leg. And then he turned and started running in another direction, the screams and people jumping in the air following his course of course.

I could see that it was about to turn back to direction (and possibly come and hit me again) so that was that. I got up and started to shout the following: "it is a god damn squirrel, calm the fuck down! you're freaking it out!!" Before my adrenaline wore off I realized that the whole rock was laughing at my statement, not because it was funny but I guess because it had been such a New York moment.

I could not see the squirrel anymore, it had ran to some obscure unseen direction by then. When I looked down I saw that my ankle was bleeding from three long scratches. Obviously the squirrel had decided to use my leg to pick up speed and in the meantime left me with my first physical and perhaps emotional scar from New York.

Ed and I got up and searched for an onsite medical team but there was none. The cops who were providing concert security told me that they could call me an ambulance but that did not seem right. Not for a simple bleeding scratch.

Because I was not sure whether the squirrel had bitten me or not we ended up going to an ER somewhere in Upper East Side. After waiting for an hour, a nurse took a look at my leg in triage and told me that there was no risk of rabies even if the squirrel bit me. My leg was cleaned and bandaged and I was out of there.

It took almost a whole week for the scratches to heal and there are three scars on my leg after three weeks.

This experience proved to me that even going to a free concert in New York has a price, in my case it was three scars in my left ankle and a damn good story to tell over drinks.