How to Fall Right

 

I thought that today would be a quiet day working from home and walking with my neighbor, but on our lunchtime walk we thought a UPS truck was about to run us down, so we moved over to the edge of the road. There was some mud there, and my neighbor slipped and fell. I asked how I could help her, so she said get some cardboard or something from all the construction going on in the neighborhood, since they're redoing our roofs and siding. I couldn't find any, but I called Travalon, who came with a sleeping bag. Meanwhile, another neighbor had come with a piece of cardboard, and yet another one (the mother of the late famous comedian) brought a chair, so my neighbor was able to pull herself up onto the chair. The mother of the comedian gave her a ride the short distance back to her house, and she sat with her foot up and put ice on it. I came over on my afternoon break and found her crutches and boots in the garage from previous times she has hurt herself, and then I gave her a ride to her vehicle so she could go to the doctor. No breaks, but her tendon is very swollen. To my surprise, despite the excitement during the lunchtime walk, I somehow got a twenty-six minute workout. How is that even possible? Sometimes I'm not sure about FitBit, like at night it says I only sleep six hours and some change, not over seven hours, because I am awake in the middle of the night... but I don't remember that. And yesterday my phone gave me no credit for charging up the hill from the Lakeshore Path, even though it usually gives me credit for four staircases. The FitBit did give me an aerobic workout for it, though.

Imagine my surprise at Adoration this evening when I heard someone coming in on crutches. "That can't be my neighbor!" I thought, but it was a teenage boy. Still, what are the odds? In all the years I've gone to Adoration, I think I've seen someone on crutches there maybe twice. So why tonight? 

I'm not sure why my neighbor is so prone to falls, or why she always seems to get injured by them. She fell one winter on some ice right outside her garage, and then not long after she had finally healed from that, she got a job as a waitress and three days in slipped on some soda and broke her foot again. Plenty of us fall, but we usually just get right back up again. Why is my neighbor so unlucky that, when she falls, she ends up with a boot on her foot? I have sprained my ankle twice, it's true, but both times involved falling down poorly maintained stairs, not just falling from losing my footing on flat ground. What causes someone like me to just fall on my badonkadonk which is so well-padded and then get back up, while my neighbor always seems to do major damage? Maybe she doesn't fall right? As a kid, I once fell off a skateboard and just tucked and rolled, and I didn't break anything, just got scraped up. Maybe I missed my calling as a stunt double, except I hate heights, and they always have to deal with heights. No thanks!

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