October 2016

I just wanted to fly a kite. It wasn't quite windy enough for an easy lift, I had to run hard trying to create enough wind to get it airborne. I was watching it bounce along the ground as I ran right off the edge of a cliff. Sometimes the prairie hides those features. So there I was suspended in the air like the coyote just before he disappears from the frame, leaving downward motion lines. Lucky for me it wasn't like the Grand Canyon cliffs he usually found, it was the pit for the garbage dump at the beach, which really softened my landing. I shouldn't have to tell you that beach garbage is worse than city garbage, you should know that. My only course of action was an immediate hike straight into the lake. I was lucky again that there was a young man cleaning up his boat house because my clothes weren't coming out of the lake with me, he was kind enough to give me a pair of skater boy shorts. "Clothes make the man", they say. Well, I was feeling pretty young and decided to get a skate board and give it a go, don't get ahead of me now. I was thinking about how accident prone I had gotten since turning 60 when I remembered a scaffold incident in 2003, I was only 52 then. It was a six story fall, I hit so many braces and planks on my way down I was going so slow when I rolled off the bottom plank I was able to land on my feet. The loading dock accident happened in my forties, the driver pulled away just as I was loading the last box of tile, they were foot by foot ceramics before they helped to break my fall and became mosaics. Memory has me in my early thirties when I became wedged beneath a boiler, I was stuck for so long they had to flood the floor to keep me hydrated, they fed me sandwiches on a hockey stick. It was the week of my 21st birthday when I got smashed in the forehead with a slab of granite, I was carrying a slab when it happened and I managed to keep my wits and finish carrying it down the hallway in the legislative building. A few ladies were swooning and a couple of others fainted at the sight of me, I knew I didn't have the looks or presence of a movie star but I also knew I wasn't hideous either, so I was confused until I wiped the sweat from my face and forehead and ended up with a mitt full of blood. Wow, did I really become accident prone at 21. Then I searched for my earliest memory. I was leaning against the south wall of Sacred Heart School when my nose suffered a blow from a home run ball. The sky turned black, well, actually, everything turned black. When the light returned there were a few dozen kids screaming at me and another half dozen crying. I look down and see somebody has painted my white t-shirt red, and some of the paint is dripping from my chin. Next thing I know, what I thought was an angel swooped me up in her arms, turned out it was only a nun. I was 7 at the time, my nose was broken, mom said my head looked like a bowling ball by the time Tony walked me home. I broke my nose two more times in the next six weeks, so I'm going with 7, that's when it all started. Unless of course there are hospital records that would prove otherwise. Anyways, I think I'll leave the skateboarding to the kids.

Have a great day

Loved