Tripping and Falling Down onto Hard Concrete at Almost 74 yr.'s of age
What you think about as you fall
Because not all face-plants are equally hilarious, I give you a bar placed at a different level . . . do da limbo
Actually, the subtitle here is a bit misleading.
I mean, I can and do recall a bit of what I was thinking as I fell.
But it happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think too deeply, or, really, to see ANY of my life “flash before my eyes,” much less to contemplate:
Is my Will up to date? I wonder if Patti will re-marry? WHY the fuck am I falling onto the hard cement of the back porch? (soon enough, once lying there moaning, I’d see the electric extension cord, looped around my ankle thus causing this tragedy . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself).
Nope, what I thought about was, Oh no, I’m almost 74 and I’m fuckin’ falling onto cement; I wonder how bad it’s going to be, how injured, how crippled, how fucked I am, and how much is it gonna hurt?
Well, here we go: Climax as dénouement, I’m afraid: a bruised hip (of course, has any old fart EVER fallen without either breaking or thinking they’ve broken their hip?), and a bruised shoulder that, like the hip and my hands and my right elbow and most of all my psyche and confidence, bumped and sore, shaken and stirred. But after lying there for at least a minute or two, scared and worried, I realized that nothing on or in me seemed broken.
So, very slowly, painfully I managed like an ancient grey phoenix, to rise again from the ashes of my fear, shame and humiliation. Pretty much okay.
I think I’m okay, anyway, after all this just happened yesterday.
Thanks for reading. Sorry I don’t have a more dramatic fini for you here — But stick around, old guys who fall down onto concrete only have so much luck.
Maybe next time.
I just wrote this very sweet little thank you note to Medium.
And I somehow hit a wrong key and the last line became the capitol T title in big bold print, And the rest disappeared; Poof, up in smokeless nothing. And for several seconds I felt like I was Tolstoy and a fire had burnt up my only draft of War and Peace, two days before I’d have finished it. This, just in case you lacked clarity on what grandiosity, fractals, egomania and self-absorption look like.
It’s 6:48 A.M., whatcha doin’?
Me? Oh, I’m sliding rapidly into Sundowner times
It’s hard not to write about getting, and now being, old.
Patti, my lovely bride is only a couple months younger than me.
We’re both 73 and as we’d say if we were kids, “goin’ on 74.”
We wake-up early most every day and have coffee together and retell the news of the day before, and complain about lots of shit and laugh about some of it.
I have a few close friends and only one or two living in a time zone where I can call and chat at this ridiculous hour, Like $Bill, who I met here on Medium, and who I visit with semi-regularly, only he’s been busy Door-dashing and playing extras in TV movies and shit in NYC.
If you’re hoping that there will be some grand point to this ramble, you haven’t read me much —
Once in a great while I hit on something important but I assure you that NEVER fuckin’ happens at 6:56 A.M. It took me 8 minutes to type this immortal work directly onto this page on Medium “Write.”
And now I’ll send it to a friendly site for younger eyes than mine to contemplate their own old-fart futures —
Best of luck to all you late risers.
Clarity: Arguing, USA Today style
Clarity Has its Drawbacks
Stating what seems obvious Feels like a waste of time, Until you listen To a willfully ignorant fool Of average intelligence Loudly pontificating Upon a passionate Wrong and stupid position. And then you realize “Half the people are stupider Than the average person. Let that sink in.”* In our times being right about something can get you killed every bit as dead as being wrong — depends on who the listener is and which side of that 50/50 split his brain is on.
My Official Apology to the Seattle M’s.
A love note to my team, not that they care, but I do!
I wasn’t raised Catholic so “Mea Culpa, mea Culpa, mea Maxima Culpa,” Doesn’t really resonate as deeply for me as it would for a “real” Catholic, like my wife Patti.
“My bad, My bad, My totally fucked-up, really maximum, bad,” even spoken in its best dead language equivalent of intention (sorry Latin) doesn’t cut it.
But when I cursed the Seattle Mariners, my lifelong home team earlier this season after an especially egregious loss and another disappointment in an endless list of them, swearing I’d NEVER watch them again unless and until they were playing in the World Series . . .
Well, fuck me. Only in caps, FUCK ME!!!
I was wrong as rain, wrong as tropical rain that drowns pets and small children.
These young M’s are everything good and right and hopeful about the role sports can play in our lives in these cynical times.
So, I apologize, M’s with all my heart and for what it’s worth, I believe in you, win or lose.
It took my three failed tries at marriage to make a fourth one finally work.
I’m a slow fuckin’ learner boyz.
But I got it now. Best of luck this weekend and always!!
Pheasant
A small tragedy
The caw of this cock pheasant blasts at us from all around the yard. Louder than a crow, when he’s close by it’s almost startling, even when I half expect it — I’ve never heard so loud a CAW CAW! Last week, driving home, as I crowned the hill to start down Northview Road, a hundred yards from the house I saw three teenaged boys, smiling, awkwardly, looking embarrassed, one of them carried, by her legs, the dead body of a female pheasant I noticed then, the litter of feathers on the road where they had hit her with their car — I decided to interpret the drama As accidental death — no crime here — I decided to believe that the boys were just making the best of it — Bluffing a little at being bold — (I imagined one of them saying) “we’ll pluck her and dress her out, you know, no sense letting her death be a waste.” The other boys nodding their consent (feigning concern about the grill of their Buick) None of them elaborating on the words “death” or “waste” — All week long, the cock pheasant has been cawing something awful — I’ve noticed he’s alone, now, at mating time — And he moves from the grassy fields, to the cherry trees, to the out cropping of rock, Landing near our yard, landing, cawing, constantly moving — I wonder if his cry That shocking, plaintive, blasting throat Is calling out to someplace Somewhere, someone Who can’t hear him anymore?
