Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for October 10, 2015

Lucky for you, Janice.You might have gotten hurt.

In the fall of 1969 I was the victim of “Walking While Distracted”. But wait you say. there weren’t any cell phones in 1969. No, there weren’t, but there was a very, very pretty young woman walking on the other side of the street and an evil parking meter on my side of the street.

It IS Janis’ lucky day! She better go get a lottery ticket!

Maybe I’m a little slow this morning, but not sure what the story is here.

I had a very good friend who had polio as a child and was in a wheelchair. One day we were going down the side walk and a co-ed in a tank top and no bra came peddling by on a ten speed bike. He stared at her as she passed, and wasn’t watching where he was going. He dropped one wheel off the curb and wound up in the gutter with the wheelchair on top of him! Once I determined that only his dignity was damaged, I laughed my a$$ off!

Dead battery saves the day?

I think the only reason more people didn’t get hurt walking was because they weren’t gum chewers.

A young man stepped into the busy road in front of me. Speed limit was 35. He was looking at his phone. I had to veer into the lane to the left without looking to see if there was a car beside me or I’d have killed him. I past right in front of him and looking in my rear view mirror, I saw him glance up in my direction then refocus on his phone. If he wants to be a recipient of a Darwin Award, fine… but people like that shouldn’t use one of us in order to ‘win’ that award.

I once watched a guy totally immersed in his phone try to walk up the “down” escalator. Only he kept trying and trying. Finally he realized what he was doing, maybe because I was LMAO.

A near UFFDA……

what is the image over Janis’ head in the 2nd panel?

…lifesaver…

Jeffring: A dead battery.

Brilliant!

I read while walking. Being distracted while reading is much worse than being distracted while walking. I would say the same about viewing lovely young ladies too.

saved by the bell! electronic though it may be.

@Dani Ring It’s not a GPS, it’s her phone. She is paying more attention to it than to where she is walking… or was, until it went dead. Had it not, she would have walked into the ditch.

I once ran into a tree when I was about 5, I wasn’t distracted I was learning to ride and was let go in a bad spot.

As an adult, I once fell down steps while holding my youngest newborn daughter because one of the older kids left a skate there. Thankfully, my daughter was fine. I hurt my bottom and my pride.

As a kid, I was running backwards, playing with the dog, started to turn my head to make sure I wasn’t getting too close to that tree and BAM! Came to with the dog jumping back and forth across me, licking my face, trying to get me to come play again. I have no idea how long I was out.

Read the signs, Janis: go home!

Saved by the dead battery

She would have seen the colored barriers. Not that realistic.

Was working in a K-Mart about 20 years ago, was talking to another employee for a second, got called up to the front to check, so I turned and found a column smack dab in front of me. Hit it hard and almost broke my nose (it did bleed). Needless to say, someone else ran a register while I recuperated and recovered my dignity.

Not all distracted events with a cell phone end so well. In early December 2012 my husband had the flu. We had to cancel a trip. He was finally feeling better for a couple of days and I suggested going out for dinner.

We pulled off the driveway and into the left lane to wait to turn into a street which we must have turned left into at least one a day in the 24 years we had been here. Our side of the 4 lane road was completely clear. The other side had traffic. We sat there around 5-7 minutes (it is a heavily traveled road). No one passed us so our side had remained clear. Husband suddenly swore and as I turned to ask him what he left in the house (the most likely reason I thought for him swearing), our car was hit in the rear, I thought to myself, as the car which hit us continued to push our car, that this was it and we were going to die. By the time we came to a stop we had been pushed out of the intersection and partially up the street. We determined that on the whole, we ourselves seemed to be okay. Knowing the traffic on our street I suggested seeing if the car could be pulled over to the side – only partially.

The young man who had been driving the other car came up and was very chipper to make sure we were okay. He said he never saw us (street lights working, car lights on, houses nearby lit, clear straight road, not cloudy or misty) and he never braked. The speed on the street is 40mph, we estimate he was going so much faster, closer to 60.

One of the crowd that collected asked him if he was using his cell phone – “I have blue tooth” – not a no. Police came made a report which we later got our copy of and it said that he had been following too close – he had to be a mile behind us at least when we stopped.

When we saw the back of our car it was gone – we could see the muffler from under the car (everything in the trunk was destroyed). If we had someone in the back seat – say a child, they would have been severely hurt. My eyeglasses disappeared off my head and I finally found them the next day when we went to clear out the car in the semi opened (by the accident) rear arm rest.

A few months go by. We had replaced the car (which we felt saved our lives) with the same car in blue instead of black (husband, who still is afraid to make left turns or stop in traffic, thought if the original had not been black we might have been seen). We were at the service station up the street and they looked at the car and said “Didn’t it use to be black?” We told them the story – they knew the “kid” who hit us. He had been – yes – texting!!!! He also lives around the corner and could be driving again at any time when we go out.

Lot’s wife looked behind her and – BAM – turned right into a pillar of salt!

Devine Intervention , is a beautiful thing.

I once bumped into an eye level sign while walking down the street that said, “Please Do Not Bump Into This Sign.”