Smooth Ice Is Paradise...

for those who dance with expertise.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

I have had a variety of jobs in my life, everything from babysitting to counting teddy bears and carved wooden Rabbi and Golda Meir dolls to waiting tables to aircraft dispatching. Last Wednesday I helped transfer 12,000 quail eggs out of the boxes they were shipped in and into trays for placement into two large bird-egg incubators. I was helping out a friend who could not find enough teenagers willing to to the job themselves this time of year. But this post isn't about that job it is about what happened to me on the way into the incubator building.

I slipped on some ice. One second I was standing upright and the next I was flat on my back. It happened fast and it happened in slow motion. I felt my feet slide out from under me and my body raise up in the air horizontally to the ground. I instinctively threw my arms upward. It felt like I hung there for a moment and then came crashing back to the earth. As I came down I pulled my head toward my chest and threw my arms straight out and slightly down to keep myself from landing full on my back. It only helped a little since my right hip hit the ice an instant before my forearms and hands. Then pain that felt like someone had hit me in the backside as hard as they could with a board slammed into the right side of my pelvis and the tissue and muscle covering it. Next, a miracle. I felt the rest of my back and pelvis hit the ice a split second after my right side did. I lay there feeling the wet, dirty, water that topped the ice start soaking into my clothes. I was in pain but my first thought was to get away from that cold and wet so I started to get up, not worrying about what I may have hurt.

Both of the women with me saw me fall and asked me if I was all right but I was focused on getting off the wet ice and did not answer them. When I got up I walked into the incubator building and leaned face first against the wall. By this time I was really feeling the pain and also feeling woozy and nauseous. I knew I was woozy because I gotten up too fast and I was sure I was feeling nauseous because the fall was a shock to my system. Again the women asked my if I was all right and I replied, "Give my a minute," then turned around and leaned forward with my hands on my knees. The nausea passed and I stood up telling them that I was alright and not seriously hurt. In fact, I was OK enough to stand and transfer eggs for the next two and a half hours.

My hip was sore and when I walked I kind of hobbled a bit but as long as I stood in one place I was fine. What I found most interesting about the whole thing was how my body reacted to the fall. When I hit the ice the shock of it vibrated throughout the rest of my body the same way the vibration of a bat striking some other solid object vibrates through your arms. The adrenaline rush of it was intense. I now think that is why I felt sick.

I remember when I was a teenager playing a game of touch football with a bunch of other kids in the side playground at Emerson Elementary School in Denver. We were playing in an area that was not big enough for what we were doing. This black-topped play area was off the brick porched-in side entrance to the school building. The porch had been screened in with chain link fencing. Once, I started running toward the porch and was so focused on the kid with the football that I lost track of just were I was and was on top of the fence before I knew it. That sixth sense we all have must have kicked in because at the last moment I turned my head and had a close-up view of the fence chain links. I knew I was going to crash into it and I knew it was going to hurt. I relaxed. I just let my body go limp. I hit the fence, I felt it give, and then I was flat on my back on the asphalt.

There had been quite a bit of noise, the sound of a bunch of kid playing, right before I hit the fence but as I lay there with my eyes closed all I heard was silence. Someone asked in a hesitant voice, "Colleen, are you all right?"
I opened my eyes and got up off the ground. I poked the tip of my tongue out of my mouth and tasted blood where I had somehow cut my lip. The rest of me felt fine. One kid told me later that when I hit the fence it was like watching a cartoon. I should have been hurt but instead I hit the fence, slammed to the ground, and then got up undamaged. I also did not have that deep full-body reverberation of shock.

I guess the fact I did not walk away undamaged this time means I'm getting old.