GRAVITY BRINGS ME DOWN AND MY TOOTH ACHES

Yesterday I told my students that when I walk I look down at my feet to make sure that there is nothing on my path that might cause me to fall.

Then after school I went to the grocery store.

I got out of my truck.

I was feeling good.

No big pains.

Well, except for the pain that I still had from a tooth that was extracted the previous weekend.

I was here at the store to stock up on Ibuprofen.

As I was walking to the store's entrance my left foot "caught" the edge of the sidewalk’s concrete curb.

I wasn't looking down at my feet.

Kaboom!

(Or whatever noises my fat body made that some sensitive instruments would have recorded had they been around to record the sounds that my plunge produced.)

I fell like a big refrigerator.

[Note: Each time that I fall flat on my face I picture my demise.

The fall feels like an instantaneity and an eternity.]

This time (like all of the other times) I caught my dumb and careless fall with my wrists, but this time my left arm was bent so that when my body impacted it punched me hard on the chest... right on my heart…

A wretched soul bruised with adversity.

But the pain of embarrassment was the first pain that I felt, and then the natural painkillers of my body kicked in.

A few concerned citizens asked
"Are you O.K.?"

I said something like "Harrumph".

I was asked again if I was O.K. and I replied,

"Yes. I fell on my heart and it hurts."

I was FISHING for sympathy when I had given this hyperbolic reply.

I stepped behind a shopping basket and slowly pushed it, taking baby steps, feeling the pain in my wrists and chest, and moaning quietly to myself.

(Don't you just love reading about my woes?)

Sorry.

I'm almost done.

So now I'm swallowing all of these NSAIDs for my extracted tooth and dumb descent.

One of these days I'm going to fall flat on my face and not be so fortunate.

Gravity is an amazing and humbling thing.

I'm going to remember to start looking down at my feet again.

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!