Once, a long time ago, the web design company I was working for was exhibiting at a dot com trade show in the Sheraton hotel in Toronto. Anyone who’s been in the industry long enough to remember Netscape 2 will know what I’m talking about, but we had to do it anyway.
Exhibitors parked on P3, which was way far underground. At the end of the show, we packed up out booth and loaded it into my very awesome 1983 VW Rabbit Diesel, and started the long spiral up the ramp to ground level. The exit to the parking garage is a fairly steep ramp that goes right up to the sidewalk, where it levels out.
I was driving and came up the ramp far too quickly in a rush to get home after a brutally dull day nobbing with sweaty sales folk, only remembering at the very last second to slam on the brakes inches from the pedestrian on the sidewalk at the top of the ramp.
This pedestrian turned to look at me, slamming his hands down on the hood of the car, quite possibly to create the right mood for the glaring look he gave me. After several seconds of this, he put his hands back in his pockets, turned, and continued on, presumably to his destination.
I was still stunned, partly from the glare and partly from the proximity to sales people, and remained stationary for quite some time. Eventually, the person sitting beside me in the passenger seat, a guy named Ben but affectionately known as “Bend” for his sickening servitude to the company owner turned to looked at me and said “Dude, you could have been famous. Why’d you stop? You almost killed Kiefer Sutherland!”