Early Bird

Idiosyncrasy

It was a normal Sunday morning. I woke up around 9 a.m., walked a few blocks down to 72 East & 1st Street to grab some coffee and a doughnut from Bluebird Coffee Shop, and then took my weekly six-minute stroll down to Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Forsyth Street to feed the hungry pigeons and watch the sun as it finished waking up in the city that never sleeps.

The birds quickly pecked at the buttermilk doughnut I brought them and flew away right after they finished to find another kind person that would feed them--too bad kind New Yorkers like me are as rare to find as owls in the daytime.

I peeked at my watch after the last pigeon departed, and realized the morning had done the same--it was already noon. I leaned back on the stiff wooden bench I was sitting on and drank the last few sips of cold coffee left in my cup. As I leaned over to toss my empty cup in the garbage can, I heard a woman shriek in the distance, so I inquisitively got up and walked towards the park exit.

As I exited the park and reached the city sidewalk, I saw a crowd of people standing across the street, staring up towards the top of a tall brick building. They looked like a bunch of baby birds waiting in a nest for their mother to come feed them. Standing at the edge of the roof with a birds-eye view of the panicking crowd was a man as bald as a coot, with a peacock blue shirt, and beak-shaped nose so big that I could see it from the ground.

I remember thinking to myself, this man is as crazy as a loon. I stood on the other side of the street, not sure if I should turn and leave then or wait to see if this man was really going to jump.

The wail of police and fire truck sirens got louder and louder as they reached the chaotic scene. Officers and firemen rushed out of their vehicles and moved the crowd out of the way. One officer began speaking very calmly to the suicidal man through a megaphone, but everything the officer said seemed to make the man as mad as a wet hen and he'd flail his arms around like a crazed bird about to take flight.

The officers were dead ducks--nothing they did or said seemed to work, and I became convinced that this man was ultimately going to leap to his own death.

I began to pray for the man as I turned to walk away, but then there was a sudden cry and sound of commotion coming from behind me. I instinctively turned around just as the beak-nosed, bald-headed man spread his wings and leaped from the roof as graceful as a swan.

He fell, arms spread out like an eagle diving off a cliff, except instead of taking a quick dip down then soaring out through the sky, the man went straight down--down into the ground.