what did i do

9:46 a.m.

I took no notice of her. She was a middle aged woman wearing an ankle length gray coat. There are probably in excess of 700,000 women in this city who look exactly or nearly identical to this one. She was maybe 1.5 meters in front of me on the sidewalk which bordered the eight lane boulevard that city planners seem so fond of in this city. My head was down practicing my new found technique of closing my eyes for brief interludes to lift my exhaustion. It seems to work, but this was the first time I'd ever tried it while not standing stationary on a metro car.

And then the non-descript broad whirled and unleased a tirade on my ass. An invective of a very Russian magnitude. I never got close enough to actually invade her personal space, even by Moscow's particularly frigid standards. But there she was veering off towards the bus stop just laying into me with a string of words that I couldn't catch,despite my diligent study of Russian profanity (think of the gold mine I could have unearthed if only she'd given me enough time to jot a few of those gems down!).