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My Sentiments Exactly
Sometimes the good Lord sends us signs.
They may be subtle … like making a commercial for puppies pop up on your TV screen just as you're trying to decide whether or not to add one to your clan. Or flashing a billboard right before your eyes along your commute that encourages you to MAKE A CHANGE right when you're pondering a job move.
Hmm.
Then again, some are flat-out bold. Take, for instance, my hard, hard fall onto the kitchen floor last week.
SPLAT.
It happened very early in the morning as I sprang off the couch (where I regularly fall asleep) into a full sprint in order to get moving on a very busy day.
"Finish that press release, finalize that mailing list, respond to those four emails, update the deliverables list. Then start on breakfast and bagged lunches, empty the dishwasher, double-check that all of Kyle's winter sports paperwork is filled out, make sure he's scheduled for a follow-up appointment with his chiropractor …"
My brain would have kept screaming demands as I made my way up to the shower, except for the fact that I wasn't on the stairs.
Instead, I was spread-eagle on the kitchen floor with a throbbing left knee, wrist and shoulder.
"Oof!" I think I said something a little more offensive out loud.
A little dazed, it dawned on me that I'd tripped over the shoulder strap on my laptop briefcase and slammed directly onto the tile.
Luckily, it broke my fall. And maybe spleen. Definitely my mojo.
"This is going to set us back a few minutes. GET UP!" yelled the gray matter.
"Hahahahahahaha, good luck with that," laughed my bad shoulder (a chronic, arthritic old thing that's been a pest since a broken clavicle from a car accident in 1990).
"Seriously! Bahahahaaaa!" chimed in my neck, which routinely betrays me since another car accident that yielded a bad case of whiplash in 2000. My stupid, testy sciatic nerve felt the need to weigh in, too. "You ain't goin' anywhere, old girl," it chided.
Gulp.
And sure as shootin', I really, really wasn't.
'Tis a sad day, friends, when you realize that you can no longer physically or figuratively bounce back from a little tumble … or a rather large thud, either.
SIGH.
It's like my girlfriend Michelle and I were discussing the other day … um, we forget.
No, seriously, we were laughing and howling about something we thought was so funny during a recent phone klatch that I commented, "This is absolutely going in my column!" And, minutes later when we finished chatting and went to hang up the phone, I said, "Hey Shel, what was it that we were laughing about, anyway?"
Neither one of us had any recollection. Zero. Nada.
And as we considered contacting Julian Assange to see whether he could hack into our phone records and remind us of what we said, like, um, 45 seconds ago, it hit me: I … am … old.
Not ancient, but pretty stinking aged, anyway. And like any elderly person, I need to start accepting the fact that I need to SLOW DOWN a bit.
Dang it.
This old stuff is coming at a really bad time in my life, by the way. I mean, I thought I was busy when Kyle was little; but I had NO CLUE what busy was back then.
Running at the speed of sound all day every day; blurring through life from deadline to deadline; zipping about from meeting to conference to cooking session to doctor's appointment to school function to church function to work function to … You get the idea.
Sigh.
Listen, folks, sometimes it takes a big ol' smack in the face with a cold, wet fish to get the message across.
STOP. SIT. BREATHE. LIVE.
Hit the snooze. Press pause. Maybe even rewind, if you can. Enjoy your world and the great people in it.
It's like Ferris Bueller said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Besides, you don't really want to waste any of it icing your knee and sucking down 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, do ya?
I hear ya, Big Guy … trying to slow down a smidge.
Patty Kimerer is a Tribune Chronicle correspondent with a really big green lump on her knee. Contact her with recommendations for serenity at www.patriciakimerer.com