I've Fallen and I Can Get Up

 

So we wound up with a little snow here.

While some just a few miles away are saying they got a lot more, I'm here to say we might have received two inches -- tops! -- in our neighborhood. Honestly, I feel like it might have been an inch but I didn't measure it.

Eventually, I felt I'd get outside though I really had no reason to.

Then I got a notification that an Amazon order had arrived.

I ordered a new cup that can handle hot and cold drinks. My mom had one that I inherited and, sadly, it disappeared during the Babe Ruth state tourney in Trumbull. That was my fault in that I stepped away from it and, when I went back, it was gone. I looked for it and it was nowhere to be found.

I was saddened to lose the cup but more because it had been my mother's.

I knew I would eventually replace it. I decided to not cheat myself and get some kind of knockoff. I remember having a similar kind of cup way back in the late 90s. Charles McCord of Imus in the Morning always drank from a silver cup that looked nice. To that end, I bought myself one that I had for years to take my coffee to work.

I called it my "Chuck Mug" in honor of McCord. I think it was a Nissan and remember it wasn't cheap. It wasn't a Stanley, ahem, cup but remember this was long before the recent fuss at Target (again, this was probably 1997)

Yeti was the brand that was recommended to me recently.

I know it will come in handy in the car, at games, and elsewhere, so why cheat myself?

I did my usual research and kept talking myself out of it. In fact, it sat in my cart on Amazon for a few weeks.

Friday night, Sean needed something ordered and, given we have Prime, I said I'd get it. I mentioned the cup -- a Yeti tumbler -- to him and he encouraged me to go for it.

It arrived today.

Now, as I am so meticulous about these things, I inspected it when it showed up. It looked nice but I was concerned about it fitting 1) in my backpack and 2) in the cup holder in my car.

I thought about it. I had to test it.

I threw my shoes on and walked up the street to the car.

With the door opened, I reached in and placed my new blue chalice into the cup holder. It was a perfect fit.

Huzzah!

With that conquest successful I felt I should brush the snow off my car.

Dressed in a hoodie, t-shirt, track pants, and LL Bean comfort mocs, I was chilly but I knew it wouldn't take long to clean up. There was no snow on the hood so I pulled whatever was on the windshield off. I tended to the roof and the trunk.

I was on the passenger side with my feet on the snowy grass when I began to feel my feet slip.

Then it all became slow motion.

Could I regain my balance?

Did I need to brace myself?

No matter what thoughts I had, there was one reality: I was falling.

And then?

Knee, meet pavement.

I was flat on the ground.

It was like a tree going down. 

My pant leg was soaked. My hoodie was wet as well.

I was quick to jump back up, rolling my eyes as I did so.

If anyone saw me, they didn't let on. Believe me, that's fine. Unless I couldn't function I don't want any attention in that spot.

My knee got a little scraped and perhaps an old muscle or two will be sore tomorrow.

Otherwise, only my pride got injured.

I suppose for a brief moment I was mindful of the fall I had at Brunswick a few years back on a rainy day when the garbage sneakers I was wearing failed me and I slipped down a hill at the baseball field. However, that day, I badly twisted my ankle. In hindsight, I should have gone to a doctor or even to get X-rays.

Of course, having health insurance would help that, wouldn't it?

Nearly five years later, my ankle still bothers me. Not enough that it's every day, but enough occasionally to be reminded of it.

I still think about how nobody saw me that day and nobody questioned the awful limp I walked with as I grimaced to and from the dugouts from the right field corner.

So, by comparison, today was nothing. If anything, it was funny.

I guess if a tree falls and nobody hears it, it didn't really happen.

Just don't tell my knee that.