There is an animal in every one of us that handles other people as obstacles or as cargo. The only question is who holds its leash.

I saw it off the leash twice before eight in the morning.

The truck came around the corner doing forty-five on a street posted for twenty. I was walking in the road because the sidewalk on my block is broken, the dog's leash in one hand and my baby's stroller in the other. He went by close enough that I felt the air move.

I got a look at him. Young, Latino like me, headed to school or to work. His eyes were somewhere else the whole time, and that's the part that pissed me off. A man with a baby stood in his road, and he never registered us.

I waved at him to slow down. Then I walked the rest of the block wishing a cop would find him, so he would learn.