Well, tomorrow is my 59th birthday and I was thinking all week on how I was going to write this really heavy, philisophical essay on aging, wisdom, life, etc. You see, my dad died at 59,
so that number has been rather significant for me. But yesterday, I did something very stupid and paid the price in physical pain.
While cleaning up leaves from the front yard, I got it into my head that I should also clean the rain gutters. Now, rather than wait until Valerie was available to come outside and hold the ladder for me, as she usually does, I thought I could do it all by myself. STUPID! Halfway through the job, while descending, my foot slipped and next thing I knew, me, the ladder and the lawn-blower were going down! Thing is, while falling over, my right leg fell into the ladder itself, which then proceeded to go the other way from where the rest of me was heading. I hit the ground hard and lay dazed for a few seconds. Through the pain, my thoughts began letting me know just how incredibly dumb I was. Sheesh, I’m lucky to be reaching 59 at all!

Well I took careful inventory, while sitting on my butt. Had bruises on my face,arms ribs, and knees, but what hurt the most was my right ankle. I had managed to extricate my leg from the crumbled up ladder beside me. By the time I found my glasses and got to me feet, I knew it was twisted badly. Sure enough, it was already swelling up fast. I carried the ladder back to the garage, put the leaf-blower away and hobbled into the house. Valerie was just coming down the hall from the bedroom and saw me collapse on the setee. I confessed my accident and, although I knew she wanted very much to add her own thoughts about my inane dumbness, she held off and immediately set about doing what needed doing. Primarily that entailed putting ice packs around that ankle, now twice its normal size.

So here I am, a day before my birthday and I’m hobbling around like Chester from the old TV western, Gunsmoke. Am going to be hurting for a while yet, believe it. The swelling is going down, and we continue to treat the leg with both ice and hot-packs. I make a point of hobbling around on it every 30 minutes. And when the pain shoots up my leg, I grit my teeth and take it as a lesson I obviously needed to learn. Surveys say most home accidents are the result of carelessness. Amen. You’d think after 58 years, I should have known better!

I really hope all of you reading this will take it to heart and learn from my fall. Ladders are always dangerous things. Be careful when using them and maybe you won’t have to limp around like me. Have a great week, Ron, over and sore.