My cellphone (Z"L) or How I almost died from Hebrew

Last night, I almost died from Hebrew.  Learning it, that is.  

There have been moments over the past couple months, as I struggled to learn a whole new alphabet and read it backwards, that I believed I might die of it.  But never did I think my tendency towards ancient Greek hyperbole would almost become an Upper West Side modern Jewish reality.  

As I mentioned before, dying an ironic death is among my worst fears and surely this would qualify.  And to make it doubly ironic, I have many times mused out loud, publicly, brazenly, smugly and without knocking on wood, that I could not conceive how someone could fall onto subway tracks (barring drunkenness).  "Ridiculous!"  said I.

Well, I very nearly became a NY Post Police Blotter snippet for tempting the fates so.

The setting: A crowded subway platform  on west 103rd street.

The players: Me, Various Disinterested Commuters and One Good Samaritan

The action: Waiting for the 1 train.

Me, a flurry of multitasking; busily texting, reading a book called, "Hebrew Talk: 101 Hebrew Roots and the Stories They Tell" and pulling two pieces of my favorite sugar-free gum Cool Colada out of my bag.  I could hear the train coming down the pike.  I could feel that hot subterranean breeze of an impending train.  I was savoring that synthetic Miami-in-your-Mouth taste that is Cool Colada.  I was learning about the power of the Hebrew word, elef.  

Then it gets a little hazy.  I know I dropped my phone.  I know I could now see the fuzzy halo of a headlight in the tunnel.  I remember watching the phone bounce across the yellow do-not-cross-idiot line painted on the tiled floor.  

Then like an urban lunatic possessed, one who cannot conceive of getting a new phone, let alone lose all those phone numbers, I inched towards the yellow line.  My bag, which was heavy with a day's worth of city living, shifted forward as I bent down and I lost my balance.  Not like, "Oopsy- should've worn more sensible shoes", but like, " Oh fuck.  I'm the girl who dies under the IRT."

But then a man, an angel really, grabbed me firmly around the waist from behind as I teetered.  If it had been any other circumstance, I would classify his grasp as borderline erotic.  But he was saving me.  Being saved is kind of erotic, actually. 

Anyway, now slightly shaken but alive, I thanked the man and the subway doors slid open.  He and the Various Disinterested Commuters boarded the train unfazed.  There was a kind of New York crisis averted and now get on with your life feeling, almost like this big dramatic thing hadn't happened.

And there I was, alone on the platform, and had a very eerie feeling.  As strange as it may seem, I started to panic that I had actually died.  "Omigod," I thought, "I've died and this is what happens.  The afterlife is going to be roaming the 7th avenue subway platform for eternity."  

It's not logical, I know, but see how you feel after almost dying by subway car.  My only solution was to run up the stairs to street level and have my existence verified by someone.  Anyone.

And there stood my perpetual port in the storm, the frozen dessert Oasis, Tasti D Lite.  I went in, my existence was acknowledged, praise Allah and I ordered.  I was alive and had 12 ounces of Peanut Butter Tasti to prove it.

My Hebrew teacher, the Rav Tastic Dvora, thinks I shouldn't take it as Greek omen to stop learning the Alef Beis, as I interpreted it, but perhaps I should now study only sitting down.