I went for a check-up the other day; as usual, the nurse asked me several loaded yet perfunctory questions, and then a new one: “Have you ever fallen?”
Have I ever fallen?
Is a crash a kind of fall, or is a fall just one kind of crash? I do avoid full-on bicycle crashes. Mountain bicycling in granny gear can end in a slow topple that would fit the description of “having fallen.” Just recently, I failed to flip my shoe out of a new cleat in a timely way, in front of a group of slackers who were lying on the grass contemplating a waterfall with the help of some pakalolo. My bicycle and I rolled as an integrated unit, quite gracefully, I thought. The young people kindly sprang to offer assistance (quite unnecessarily) while my husband, JB, was looking at a tree.
Then there’s skiing, in which faceplants are certainly a type of fall. After a long tropical hiatus, I have taken up downhill skiing when I do visit home. I don’t fall. I swoop down the bunny slope with a light lift on the turn and a swish of the long skis. Al Merrill himself taught me that turn in winter PE (after he discerned that I would not be racing material). I still go faster than JB.
Falling off a paddleboard counts as a fall. It’s actually a lot like skiing (though the nurse wouldn’t understand that) because with the waves coming at you like moguls, you need to lean forward and flex your knees. How many paddleboard instructors tell people that? If the waves are coming from behind, it’s more like surfing (which the nurse might understand), and I don’t know how to surf, so I fall.
Toboggans roll, crash, and wipe out, but it’s hardly a “fall” when one’s center of gravity is so low to begin with. A different nurse in a different time and place hit the alarm bells when she saw my bruises. Fortunately, my mother was in the waiting room, and was available to confirm that I was telling the truth, I had just been tobogganing, and my husband was not to blame.
Then there’s red tropical clay, slippery when wet. There are skates and ice. There are yoga instructors who demand acts contrary to the laws of gravity and physics. How do I fall? Let me count the ways.
The nurse was still looking at me, and authority demanded an answer. “Why, yes,” I said, “Just yesterday.” She frowned with concern from there in her seat. “I tripped on a plain picnic table…” I said, growing red as a beet, “you know, on my porch, at Kilikina Street.”
(January 2018; image courtesy Random House Children’s Books)
The Singing Forester 