Thursday, February 15, 2023

 Thursday, February 15, 2023

 

   I ran into Dean on my morning walk. We shared accident stories. I told him how I 'flew' down a long flight of stairs at Hunter College in 1977, looking like Wonder Woman as I dove for the wall at the end of the landing. It's quite a story. I've told it before in the blog, but it is always fun to tell it again.

   It was just before the change of classes. I was heading to the cafeteria to get a bite before my class. As I was going down the stairs, I passed this adorable girl. This equally adorable boy came up the stairs a second later to greet her. I turned to my right to enjoy the Norman Rockwell scene; I caught the exposed big toe of my left foot in my right pant leg. I couldn't free the foot. I struggled once or twice as I tilted forward, heading for a life-threatening fall. That's my last memory.

   I woke up at the bottom of the stairs against the landing wall, lying on my right side. The cute young man was at my side as I turned over. "How are you?" Fine. "Try and move." While I knew he was concerned I had broken my spine, I felt I was all right. I got up, people handed me my books and purse, and I went to class. I had a slight bruise on the inside of my left knee but otherwise was fine. As I tried to wash my hair the following morning, I discovered I couldn't get my arm up to my head. I had a torn rotator cuff.

   As far as I can figure out, this is what happened. When I hit the tipping point,  my unconscious mind took over, used all the knowledge I had from dance and diving, put me in a dive, pointed me for that far wall, guided me to push off as one would in a dive, and knocked me out so I wouldn't interfere with the plan. I pulled off a stunt a professional stuntwoman wouldn't been so happy to try.

   Dean's story was about how he got T'ed on a motorcycle by a sixteen-year-old driving her brand-new car. The wheels of the car went right over his head, crushing his helmet. He suffered memory problems for several years but devised systems to compensate for it.

  Today was the day Dan started cutting down the Ficus trees. Taylor had delivered a dumpster yesterday. What an elegant system. He drives an immaculate truck designed to carry the dumpsters. He backed the truck into the yard, pushed a button, and a mechanism smoothly moved the dumpster off the truck's bed onto the ground, released a hook, and retracted a chain, pulling the hook back to its resting place.  

  Dan spent the day cutting down the Ficus trees and putting them in the dumpster with this tractor thingy with a 'thumb," some mechanical appendage that can pick up large chunks of wood and hoist them into the dumpster.

  Yvette and I were planning to add the palm fronds the gardener had stashed out of view to the dumpster. B, who lives on the property, drew my attention to them. Yvette went down to start the process. She backed out. "Betty, could we just have Dan put that pile of fronds into the dumpster? There are too many creepy crawlies for me." Sure. Instead, I did it all by myself and had a wonderful time. I cut the spikey section off the fronds and threw those in the dumpster. The rest I set aside for Darby.

   Darby is up for all green waste I can pass her way. It just can't be anything with spikes: no bougainvilleas and no palm fronds with spikes. Those palm fronds are heavy. They were going to add weight to the waste in the dumpster. I had to pay per pound. I cut off the spiky part, put that in the dumpster, and piled the rest to take to Darby's. I rolled a garbage pail filled with green waste down the street to her house. As I came down the driveway, I yelled, "Delivery!" I was delivering more than waste. Darby had lent me a book months ago with stories of old  Kona dating back to WWII. The authors were mainly Japanese who wrote in an Anglicized version of Hawaiian pidgin. I found reading it unpleasant because of the language, but the stories were interesting, so I plow through.