The First Fall

My wife says I’m thinking too much about getting older. I say, hey, I fell down, I’ve always been clumsy. Her eyes say, “Bull Shit.” She says, “Self-fulfilling prophesy.” I have always been clumsy, but, I’m like a tree, you are going to have to wait a long time until I finally fall. I don’t know the last time I “fell” without good cause.

I fell out of a tree a couple of times, I think, when I was a kid. Falling during snow skiing and ice skating doesn’t count. Nor, does getting drunk and “jus’ sitin’ dow’ rye here”. I mean, sitting down is not falling. The kind of fall we are talking about here is where you are doing something you have done a thousand times and suddenly, something has gone wrong, and what you are standing on is shooting out from under your feet and you think, “Where’d the ground go?”

I was always, like, you know, what’s wrong with old people? How the hell did they let themselves get like that? Why the hell are they always falling? And the hips! Enough with the broken hips! Do they just tense up? Can we teach them to just go down when they feel a fall coming on?

Finding yourself a few feet off the ground, sideways, without a net, is a time for deep personal reflection about getting older. Mid-air in this leap toward the abyss, a voice spoke to me, and said, “You are 59 and one half years old, and you need to be humbled. You are about to have an epiphany about getting older and this will be your final warning, sir.”

I now believe, the ‘humbling, final warning’ that the voice promised was the impact with the ground. It hurt. It knocked the wind out of me, literally and metaphorically. I laid there an instant before I jumped up, pretty sure I had not broken anything.

Thankfully, the fall left my ego far more bruised than my body. A skinned knee and a bruised hip were the only issues by Thursday. But, I can’t help but feel, so that’s what it’s like to “fall”. Was that the first “fall” of old age?

Our 70 year old Red Oak tree, fell in 90 mph, micro-burst winds on Oct. 2. We had it cut and kept several logs as seats around the patio fire pit. I was standing on, and fell off of, one of those logs. The irony is not lost on me.