Falling Down

A ridiculous fall leaves me predictably sore and unpredictably enlightened

Two days ago I fell while putting on my sneakers.

The absurdity of this does not escape me. I mean, I’m fresh off a bike trip through Italy, during which I rode for between 20 and 42 miles a day over challenging terrain without incident. I run a couple of hilly miles every day. I have been feeling very proud of my injury-free track record but you know what they say about pride, that it goeth before a fall (or in my case, immediately following).

I find myself replaying the fall in my head, because it’s so idiotic and bewildering. Typically, I take turns standing on one foot to put my shoe on the other foot, bending over to lace them. I feel like a badass resisting the age-appropriate common-sense approach, which would be to sit down to put on my footwear. I had one sneaker on the floor and I was putting on the other when I lurched to the side, knocking myself off balance, and to steady myself, I put my suspended foot down on the floor, only the sneaker was there and I tripped over it. The ensuing descent was like a rickety building collapse. I could actually hear my joints popping and cracking on the way down. I wound up flat on my back on the floor, the wind knocked out of me, certain that all that popping and cracking was the snapping of my ribs.

My daughter Sarah was with me and saw the whole thing. She rushed to my side, told me that I was okay, to just breathe. I really appreciated this.

I was sore. I am still sore. But ibuprofen and ice are small miracles, and despite the dramatic sound effects, nothing inside me broke.

Calamity runs the gamut, from wholesale tragic to are you kidding me? Obviously, this is the latter. When I fell, lying there before daring to move, I thought about how stupid I must look. How humiliating this was. There may have been a rueful laugh. But my pride, my shame, the specific details, while shaping the narrative, are beside the point. The point being, I got back up.