Well, Mag, I had a similar sort of moment Friday standing in the parking lot at Home Depot.

All of a sudden one of the cars backed out of its spot and into me.

By the grace of magic and divine balance, he was going slowly enough that I was able to leap to one side and slap his left fender quite hard before anything broke and kept my feet. But it was a very startling moment, transitioning from looking over a parking lot to "OH, now I am being hit by a moving car..." and leaping aside and hollering... The driver, a young man with a blank sort of stupid look on his face said, "Oh, I'm sorry, man. I didn't see you." This made me feel much better, at least better than I would have felt if I thought he had done it while seeing me.

Despite the fact that one inch of accelerator depression could have made the difference between a near-miss and a smashed leg, he seemed relatively non-plussed by things. A nearby couple asked me a few minutes later if I was all right, having watched the whole thing.

I was glad I had managed to nip out of the way in response to that first moment of impact, but I was pretty pissed off at the guy and felt grumpy for half an hour or more afterwards.

A