Fall

Adults are not supposed to fall down.

Children fall down.  I remember falling down quite often and always hopping back up.  Head wounds required stitching on two or three separate occasions but I find this to be an acceptable number for the couple decades it took me to learn how to be a human.

Last night I was walking from the gig to my car.  I was not drunk.  My mind was preoccupied with a million thoughts, all sped up on adrenaline from playing rock and roll for the past three hours.  I was getting close to my car and thinking about my questionable parking job and thinking about what I would do if I have been towed and thinking about which band might have played at The Pig that night and thinking about stopping for broccoli bites on the drive home and then I was down.

The main culprit was my own lack of focus but I might argue the pedestrian walkways of Salem, Massachusetts are not exactly level.  The corners of giant slabs of concrete jut out into the path like a miniature mountain range.  My worn out chuck taylors must have clipped an edge and down I went.

Sharp pains ran through my wrist and elbow.  I quickly pulled myself up from the ground, checking to see if any of my parts had broken.  Fortunately, they had not.  From the down the street someone yelled, "Hey buddy, are you alright?" and my heart swelled with the warm joy that only comes from the unsolicited assistance from a stranger, but I was too embarrassed to reply.  I quickly turned and walked away.

This morning I noticed a scrape on my palm as big as two grains of rice next to each other and I put some ointment on it and thought about broken wrists and shattered elbows and the healthcare system and self-employment and the resilience of the human body and how we take our youth for granted.