I would encourage anyone who owns a cellphone to break it, and have to send it away to an insurance company with no option of getting a loaner phone (unless you deposit 800 dollars), to see how it makes you feel. Free, or angry? Agitated, or peaceful? It should be mandatory to have to give up your phone for two weeks every year, at the minimum. Just to remind yourself that you can do other things that stare downward if you need to stand still for over thirty seconds.

I told my students I was sending my phone away and would have no phone for a week, and one of them said "You can't go without your phone for a week?"

Thank God. Humanity still exists in the younger generations.

I saw an accident last Thursday. I didn't see it happen, but I was there before the police. A man riding a bike was struck by a semi, who was unaware anything happened. The man was dragged under the truck for fifty meters before it came to a stop.

I was picking up my partner. I usually don't. She had called me. I was running a bit late. I said I'd try to be there by eight, but it was almost eight when I left. He was struck at 7:53, I think. I went to turn right on Park St and saw a mangled bicycle and a hat. I looked further right and saw a semi, crooked on the road as though it had stopped as it was getting into the right lane.

Oh God, I thought.

The bike was mangled, but not completely distraught. There was no body to be seen. The person must have been okay. I drove up along the semi, looking for the driver, in the left lane waiting for my turn signal. I inched closer to the front of the semi. Just then, the first police car arrived. It parked without even coming around to the right side, and a lady jumped out. I looked at the sidewalk, where a group had collected, expecting her to go there and check out the person to see if he was okay.

She bent under the front of the semi, and then I saw.

I was reading the news, trying to figure out if the man who (I think) lost both legs from the incident made it. The only thing I found was comments of people asking why Burger King was being demolished.