It seems as if I suffer from genetic imbalance. In other words, I come from a long line of people who tend to fall down at the wrong time and do damage to themselves. The earliest recollection that has any significance is the time Dad started things rolling. It was in the late 1970’s and my older sister had moved to her first house in Skokie. It was wintertime and a bitter cold had turned snow into icy patches on the sidewalk. Dad was now in his fifties and maybe a little too confident about his gait. Before he could make it to the front door, he slipped and proceeded to break his left arm to such an extent that a surgeon placed a metal rod in his arm. One could see its very obvious outline under the skin. He kept the rod in him for years out of fear- not of the bones falling apart inside but of the pain in having it removed. However, it finally got to a point about twenty years later when another surgeon removed it because it was causing a hole in his skin by the elbow and he was leaking in more than one place, if you know what I mean.
It was Ma’s turn next and she made Dad look like an amateur. She and I had gone to visit another sister on the East Coast. Ma was in a hurry to go between rooms at a banquet hall where they just recently waxed the floor. She was wearing high heels which she hardly wore anymore. You guessed it. She went flying as she fell and ended up not only tearing her shoulder but also breaking a hip to boot. She stayed on the East Coast for a couple of months at a rehab place after a doctor had repaired her hip. He did little for her shoulder other than pat her on the back and wish her well.
Continue reading “Fall In The Family”
Are baby boomers the last generation to latch onto crossword puzzles? If I were in charge of education, I’d make it so that once kids learned basic reading and writing skills, they’d be obligated to take a course in word puzzles. The class would be geared toward teaching them how to recognize word and sentence construction by doing all the different type of puzzles. For example, When they’d see a four letter word that began with a t and ended with a t, they would know instinctively that more than ninety percent of the time, it would be ‘that’. They would learn the rhythm of word flow and usage. They would also appreciate being able to complete the puzzle and feel a sense of accomplishment. This makes more sense than forcing them to read a novel and try to get them to explain what the author meant. Who cares what the author meant!
I approach a room with a sign on the door that reads ‘Growth’. I enter in and see that there is a fellow sitting at a desk reading a book. A nameplate reads: H. Allen Smith. I say to him, “Mr. Smith, or should I call you H?” He looks up from the book and gives me a nasty sneer and says, “you can call me Henry.”