Today I let the Universe down.

It started with a podcast interview for Marketing Professor Jeff Shulman at the University of Washington. Shulman is putting together a variety of perspectives on growth in Seattle and he wanted mine. So I decided to walk to the University from Capitol Hill. It was a beautiful day and the exercise and solitude is always welcome. I ended up being the phone much of the way dealing with some kind of glitch at Group Health that meant that I kept getting letters saying my coverage was terminated as of June 1. It couldn’t be. And the customer service representative agreed.

“What if I showed up in the emergency room with a broken leg next month?” I asked? “Would I be covered?”

“Well, no,” he said.

“Well, we gotta fix that,” I said.

“We’ll get it taken care of,” he promised.

James, the customer service representative did a great job. He explained the error and said that this time, it is fixed. I believe him. I want to believe him. What choice do I have? Until I get the next letter, I guess.

But still it was a beautiful and brisk walk. Somewhere along the way a man walking a bike stopped me and said, “You’re that real estate guy, right?” He was with a woman wearing a hat but with no bike.

“I read about you in The Stranger,” he said.

These moments are always a little unnerving because I don’t know if the guy loves me or hates me. For all I know this could be Jhande.

“Yes, I’m Roger Valdez,” I said extending my hand. “ What’s your name?”

He said his name and that he was from Eastlake and was in commercial real estate. He said he read my followed my work. We chatted a bit. I didn’t get the impression he thought I was all that bad, but he didn’t slap me on the back either.

I got to the Paccar building where the interview was going to happen and I was impressed with the building and especially its public spaces. And the building was a pleasant surprise. Most buildings at the UW are like taking a trip through a small intestine or something out of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil; just awful. Academic architecture seems to relish confusing, distended hallways with weird, incoherent and Kafkaesque numbering schemes.

“I’m looking for Room 2357.”

“Oh, you’re in the wrong place. That’s between Rooms M574 and the Warren Moon Interpretive Center.”

Anyway, it is a surprisingly airy and coherent building for an academic building.

I did the interview, which was, as Donald Trump would say, “Great. We did great!”

I talked about how we needed leadership that would talk about growth like it was Santa Claus, not Godzilla; growth brings along many gifts not destruction. We should welcome it, embrace it and leave it cookies and milk. I’m looking forward to hearing Shulman’s whole project which he says will come together later this year.

Shulman does two things for every interview, takes a selfie of the people he interviews and gives them a brand new Foster School of Business thermos mug thing. It’s beautiful thing. It’s polished stainless steel and looks like an artillery shell or a mortar. I had no place to put it. My bag was packed. So when I left, it became this awkward friend along for the trip back home. What should I do with this thing? When I went to lunch at the gyros place I felt like I should ask it what it wanted. Beef or lamb? It sat there staring at me the whole lunch like it was hungry.

Having finished lunch, I headed out to walk back to South Lake Union. I decided to head toward the University Bridge in the most direct possible route, down 45^th and then to 11th across the bridge.

When I got to that intersection, 45^th and 11th, I decided to cross from the east to the west side of Brooklyn. There was a black Honda stopped at the light. The walk sign came on. I looked at the Honda. Stopped. I started walking toward the walk sign. The Honda started to move. And in one of those achingly slow distortions of time, it kept going.

“He’s got to stop, right,” I thought. “I’m right here, so, he’ll have to stop or run over me.”

Well he didn’t stop. And I am guessing it was a he and it was one he since the windows were tinted completely black. I went on to hood, and somehow I could feel his foot on the gas, and he kept going.

“This is actually happening,” I thought as I did a pretty good stunt man roll off the windshield and onto the ground.

I could hear a metal spinning sound, like a top. It was that thermos. I rolled over and grabbed it. I stood up. I was a quarterback now. The Honda, disappearing down 45^th, had a hatchback. I figured I could get the thermos right through that glass hatch. Right hand. Ready. Damn. He was just too far now. It wouldn’t have even hit the bumper.

I watched the car disappear into traffic.

And just as I thought about it I heard a voice call out.

“Hey! Did you get the license plate?” a guy in a truck who slowed down asked.

“No, “ I said. “Didn’t get it.”

A guy now standing waiting at the light and I chatted about cameras. There weren’t any.

All the way back to work, I kept thinking about the left-right-left accelerate problem. It’s the thing we do when were at a light and we look left, then right, then left and then there’s that moment when we put our foot down. That’s what happened. Left. Right. Left. Foot.

Who was the driver? Who Ran Down Roger? It’s like Who Shot JR? Many people with the means and the motive; but who knows? But he left without his thermos. It really belongs to him and I should have given it to him right through that hatchback. I hope one day I’ll run into the driver and that I’ll be able to apologize and give him his thermos. Until then I’ll hang onto it.

Cities can be rough and tumble places. The contact we have with each other spans the spectrum of joy and pain. I don’t want to end this story with some pat bromide. So I’ll just leave it right there.

And in the end, the Universe always wins.