It all happened so quickly. One moment I was walking to the car after a meal out with friends. The next I was lying face down in the dirt. It took a few seconds for me to realise what had happened. My life didn’t pass before my eyes — no Chicken Run “it was really boring” revelation — but as I lay there my priorities were surprisingly clear.
I was most concerned for my (rather expensive) glasses. Then my beloved tweed jacket. Then whether I’d dropped anything out of my pockets. Then that I must be covered in mud. It was a while before I realised my left hand was hurting quite badly where I’d extended it to break my fall. As I got slowly to my feet I figured I probably hadn’t broken anything but I had no clear idea how I’d ended up on the floor. My friends were no less bemused. Jack and Aimee had been on the opposite side of the car and saw nothing. Walking behind me, Spencer had seen everything. Except there’d been nothing to see. A stumble, then me flat on my face. They were all gently sympathetic as Jack drove us to Aimee’s so I could catch my taxi home.
Aimee is one of my closest friends. She lives with epileptic seizures and knows a thing or two about falling and injuries. I’ve been with her on several occasions when she’s hurt herself from a fall. The realisation that something similar had happened to me hit her hard. She messaged me later that evening.
I finally know how it feels to have a friend fall and get hurt … I don’t like it!!!! At all!!!
Aimee gets the aura — a metallic taste in her mouth — that some people experience immediately before a seizure. Unfortunately, it comes too late for her to take protective action such as sitting down. I’ve always thought how scary that must be for her. I didn’t faint or lose consciousness. I wasn’t drunk or even tipsy. (One pint of Guinness 0.0 with my meal.) I nonetheless had no warning I was about to fall. No sense that I was tripping up or off balance. I was walking to the car. And then I was on the ground. I didn’t like it much either, but the experience added something to our mutual understanding. For that I’m grateful.
Hopefully my tumble was a one-off but it’s brought a few things to mind. I’ll be sixty-five in March. I’m in good health generally but that won’t always be the case. My mother had a tendency to fall as she got older. She’d fall forward — as I did – rather than to one side or the other. Her specialty was breaking falls with her face. I managed to get both hands in front of me. Another time I might not be so fortunate. It’s an unsettling thought.
Shrinking is an American comedy-drama television series. I’ve not watched it but there’s a video short currently circulating on social media. It’s taken on a new significance since my tumble. In the video Dr. Paul Rhoades and Gerry, played respectively by Harrison Ford and Michael J. Fox, meet in what I take to be a hospital waiting room. Both characters have Parkinson’s Disease, a degenerative condition that Fox lives with in real life.
Gerry: How’s your balance?
Paul: Not bad. The stupid exercises help.
Gerry: Me? I fall three times a day. I’m thinking of taking up stunt work.
The humour is appropriately dark. There’s no history of Parkinson’s disease in my family but who knows what’s out there waiting for me. At some point my body will make clear its particular proclivity for ill health. In my twenties I spent three years working at the Parkinson’s Disease Society Research Centre in London. I never wrote up my PhD thesis. Contracting the condition in later life would be monumentally ironic. In the meantime, I’ll take this experience for what it is. I shared the cover image and title of this post with Aimee. She clicked the laugh emoji, then questioned if that was an appropriate response. I assured her it was. My fall wasn’t pleasant but my hand is fine now, my glasses and jacket emerged unscathed, and I’ve learned a few things about myself. I call that a win.
All that said, if you see a guy in his mid-sixties busting moves in a car park, don’t applaud or pass on your way. It might be me. If it is, I need assistance!
Photo by Raphael Mittendorfer at Unsplash.
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