bête comme fedora

"dessin numero 1" from Le Petit Prince

At the age of six, Saint-Exupery tells us in Le Petit Prince, he made a little drawing of a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. When he asks grown-ups if the drawing scares them, they answer, "Pourquoi un chapeau ferait-il peur?"

As the 750 Rapid rolls through the Reseda intersection, on the other side of Ventura Blvd, at the edge of a furniture shop that features kitschy cast iron sculptures in its outdoor lot--a reclining black bear with cub, a pony tailed girl in swing--I calculate.

In Chicago, before the realignment of Lake Shore Drive and the construction of a campus extending Grant Park to the south, the Field Museum was separated from downtown by five accelerating lanes of southbound LSD. One summer day I saw a man, apparently piqued by the crosswalk light's delay, calmly step into the rushing torrent and stick out his hand like an intrepid Charlton Heston parting waters in The Ten Commandments.

Fifty yards before impact, oncoming drivers begin laying on horns with the persistence of a kid discovering the fun of a glue gun only to be left with a crumpled sketch of a replica Robie House for the Jack Russell--Brandy--a backyard of disastrously sentimental sawdust and a sticky mess running down the inside pant leg. After cars screech to a halt, the target of our urban knight's shock-chivalry walks nervously across the bridge of bumpers created for her.

Seeing a gap, I dash across the four west-bound lanes, pause between the center yellow lines, look right, dodge a couple cars turning left from Reseda and jump in front of the bus. The driver opens the door and asks, "Do you have a death wish?"

With a grown-up grimace I answer, "Pourquoi une voiture ferait-elle peur?"