Falling

When one first learns to walk, falling is a big deal. It hurts. You try to avoid it if you can, but it isn't always possible because you aren't good at walking yet. But falling is one of the reasons why you learn how to walk better pretty quickly. You don't want to fall. After you learn to walk well, you soon forget about falling until you begin to take risks, and taking risks is what being young is all about. So, though you try to avoid falling, it isn't a big deal anymore.

As I have said many times, I have some rather inept genes that have made me an awkward creature at best. Even without taking huge risks, I'm a notorious faller. I have fallen in ash piles, mud puddles, on sheets of water-covered ice and in completely dry, ice-free environments. As a child, I repeatedly fell on the way to school causing me to go back home freezing or dripping wet to change into dry clothes. I'm sure it got to be no surprise to my mother to see me home again fifteen minutes after I had started off to school, describing the latest fall.

I did get better at walking. I hardly ever fell during a large stretch of my life. I may have even gotten rather cocky about my adeptness at walking. Lately, I do not take walking or falling lightly. The prospect of falling has returned with old age and with a new twist. Oh, it still hurts, but now it's harder to get back up again. And now there's embarrassment attached. I have performed some splendid dives in fact. I fell off the deck once for no apparent reason. I did not stick the landing, however. It stuck me. On my way to a hockey game in Columbus, I walked across the street to get to the arena, slipped on a ridge of packed snow and dove head-first into the brick walkway. People around me, having heard the thud of my forehead on the bricks I'm guessing were concerned for me and helped me up, but I couldn't help being embarrassed about it.

Most older people feel this way, I think. We have good reasons for falling, after all. Our knees and legs don't work very well anymore and if stopped for a sobriety test, few of us could walk a straight line dead sober. But we're not kids for crying out loud. We are otherwise capable and highly functioning adults. This should not be happening, we think. We know how to walk, been doing it for years. I have not seen it myself, but somewhere there must be one of those "Growing Old" books for dummies. We'd be too proud to buy it anyway, I suppose.

So if you see an older person doing the flop, don't just dust them off and send them on their way. Don't say "Are you alright?" and walk off. Tell them that was one of the most spectacular falls you have witnessed in your entire life. Get his autograph. Shake her hand. Take a selfie with him. Make her feel that there was at least one good reason she can no longer negotiate streets and byways anymore. Then and only then, make sure she has medical insurance.