In case you thought that you heard the tornado siren going
off around the university campus tonight, it wasn’t the siren; it was me. Tonight I went to walk off my “dinner roll”.
I had just gotten back from picking up a saw and a hacksaw (I guess the hacksaw
is just a cheap copy of a real saw). Don’t get any grand ideas that I was going
to do any kind of carpentry work ‘cause I got no skills. I actually just needed
to cut the ends off of a piece of lattice, which I might have been able to do
with a steak knife but I thought the saw and hacksaw would give me points on my
mancard and also give me some neighborhood street cred.
I went in the house and put on my old lawn-mowing clothes
(the almost sheer shirt and 1990’s swimsuit that I always wore prior to hiring
the Adios Grass Brothers) and unloaded my car of its manly tools. I started
thinking about the fact that once I got started I needed to finish the entire
project and decided that I should put it off until tomorrow. The sun was
starting to set and it was so nice out that I thought it would be a perfect
time to go and get my walk on.
I hesitated for a
minute, as I was still in my former lawn-mowing attire, but I knew that if I
went back in the house there would be no laps for me tonight, except for the
ones I would make in my bowl of ice cream later. So off I went, pride to the side, determined
to get in a little sunset exercise.
I got to the track and had forgotten that it is next to a
pretty busy road but I just tried to ignore my “bad neighbor” period costume
and focus on the task at hand. I put on Pandora, plugged in my earbuds and took
off. I made one sweaty loop around the track, along with about five other
people and noticed as I turned the corner, that up ahead, off to my right in
the grass, was a college guy with a golf club and some golf balls. I looked
back down and didn’t look back up again until I was just maybe ten to fifteen
feet away. What I didn’t know was that he had some kind of practice golf balls
that are like a cross between a ping pong ball and cotton candy. That really
would have been nice to know in advance. All I know is that I was going
straight ahead, full turtle, and he was facing me but was just a few feet to
the right. When I looked up he was swinging through and zing, he sliced and the
ball was headed straight for my big ol’noggin. I am not sure if it hit me or
not but I think it did graze my hair. Hitting my hair, with all this gel in it,
would actually cause more damage to a golf ball than to my head.
Anyway, he hit the ball and it came flying at me at an angle
and I screamed like a white woman…screamed…like a white woman. Somewhere
mid-wwscream, I torqued into a fantastic ninja/matrix move. The problem with me
doing ninja/matrix moves is that I don’t do them every day and they require
practice…stretching…and time. In a flash of a second, somewhere post-wwscream
and mid-ninja/matrix move, my back went out. Well not really out, but it caught
and I couldn’t stand back up. I ended my ninja/matrix move with a loud, “Ouch,
ouch, ouch,oooohhh” and then a few other words that I can’t remember how to
spell. Let’s just say that everybody at the track and all the cars passing by
heard me…loud and clear. This strange double event was followed by a
slow-motion dialogue. It may have only felt slow-motion because I could only
move in slow-motion. Anysqueal, the
golfer ran over and was yelling, “Are you alright? Are you ok? That didn’t hurt
did it? I can’t believe that hurt. I am so sorry. Are you ok?” I was bent over
thinking I was never going to be able to walk in a fully upright position
again. I stood there bent over for a minute, taking it all in. At my feet was
the ball and I could see it was a fake…a little plastic
designed-to-not-travel-very-far fake
golfball. I wanted to lie and conjure up a goose egg on my forehead or whip out
some fake blood or something. The last thing I wanted to do was to tell him
that I had moved too fast and that I had a catch in my back and that I had the
musculoskeletal system of a 95 year old man. He was apologizing and all
confused as to how I could be hurt so badly by a nerf ball and why I was
wearing a swimsuit from the 1990’s in public. All I could do was moan and try
to stand upright…without any luck.
Finally, I ran out of ideas and told him the painful truth.
I told him that the ball had not hit me but my back was messed up. I told him
not to worry about it, that I would be fine and that I was going home. So I
waddled off the track like a creature from a fairy tale that lives under a
bridge …and wears old lawn-mowing clothes in public.
Let’s just say it took a moment for me to get into my car. I
didn’t look back to see the audience. I know they were there; I could fee their
questioning eyes on me but I just didn’t want to look. I tried to put my feet
into the car first and then decided it would be best to “back in” and then I
changed my mind and started with the foot again. I had to be a sight. I drove
out of there knowing that I had not walked long enough to have burned any
calories or lost any weight but I had definitely lost a huge chunk of my pride
and a large portion of my dignity…that’s got to count for something, right?
I got home and decided I needed to just put the saw and the hacksaw
in the shed and think about all that tomorrow….if I could get out of bed in the
morning. I went around to the back and opened up our big old, run-down shed.
The doors slide open on tracks and as I opened the door, a rabbit jumped out,
straight at me. Once again, I screamed like a white woman and did some kind of
body jerk. I didn’t move much but just tensed up all over. That prompted a loud,
“Ouch, oh, oh, (fill in the blanks), oh!” Beside me was the privacy fence. On
the other side of the fence was my next door neighbor. He is a nice guy, great
neighbor, but to be honest, I don’t know his name, what he does for a living,
where he went to school…nothing. He is just kind of my “Howdy neighbor” on the
other side of the fence. I think he is mid to late thirties and has lived there
now for about ten years. Sometimes I am slow to mingle…don’t judge.
So I am standing there with my heart trying to figure out if
it needs to send me some kind of warning pain to let me know that I can’t keep
doing things like this, and I hear my neighbor, “Are you ok over there?” I
wanted to make up a story of some kind. Once again I found myself backed into
the little white lie corner. I wanted to tell him that I had just, minutes ago,
been almost killed by a golf ball and that I was still suffering from PTGBS
(Post Traumatic Golf Ball Syndrome). I couldn’t do it. I had already lost most
of my dignity and pride, what else was there to lose? So I told him that I had
just seen a rabbit and that it had scared me and made me jump and hurt my sore
back. He responded, “A rabbit made you scream like that?”... (laughter heard
over the fence) “Are you going to be alright over there Princess or are you
going to need some help?” And then it happened; he swiped my mancard and took
away all my earned credits and bonus points.
In the morning I will be getting up early. I’ve got to make
sure to be all set up before my neighbor pulls out of his driveway to go to
whatever job it is that he does, wherever that might be. I will be all set up
with a table, saw and a hacksaw. I am not sure what I am going to be sawing but
it is not going to be my white balsa wood lattice. I am going to have limbs,
old furniture…maybe a pipe or two sitting out and all ready to be chopped to
bits. I am going to get those points back.
Oh yeah, I might even buy something like a rocking chair and say that I
built it while he was gone to work…or while he was in jail…or whatever it is he
does during the day.
I am also going back to the track in full, matching, tracksuit
gear and wearing shoes that aren’t green half way up. I will try to regain some
of my dignity and pride while also losing weight. I know that I am going to have to go up to
each person at the track and ask if they were there and saw all the commotion.
I have to track each one down and fix this story. In my defense, I didn’t know
that it wasn’t a real ball! That ninja/matrix move could have saved my life,
even though a good pre-stretch and more time to get into position would have
been really nice. As for my neighbor, he needs to understand that I had just
been through a traumatic situation only to come home and find myself face to
face with an animal that had fur and it was lunging at me. It could have been a
rabid dog or a cougar or something. That wwscream might have been enough to
scare off a wild animal…it certainly alerted the neighbors…it was a natural
reflex and once again, it could have saved my life. Yeah, that’s my story….I am
getting those points back…dignity and pride to follow.
