ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 21, 1996 TAG: 9608210007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
Here is the aged, semi-hysterical, semi-retired reporter turning an ankle and falling down while mowing the cruel bank in front of his house.
All the rules of suburbia say that you don't fall down in front of your house.
People won't admit it, but they think there's something funny about an overweight old person falling down - especially if he's wearing knee-length black shorts, calf-high socks, an American Electric Power baseball cap and a pair of football shoes called Pit Bulls.
Even worse than giggling is the other response such a spectacle causes, which is rushing over to see if the elderly person is hurt.
Fortunately, nobody on Happy Highfields Road saw me fall or heard my comments at the time.
Thus, nobody went home and said: "Too bad about old Bennie. On his way out, I think. Fell down on his bank today and laid there like a stricken water buffalo."
I may be old, but I'm tough. It took some time, but I got up, pal. Sure. I screamed a little when I stood on my right ankle but I didn't make a big deal out of it.
I winced like Charlton Heston and went right on mowing. I limped in for a Mountain Dew with zero calories and casually, the way brave men talk of hurt, mentioned I had turned my ankle.
I was told to take off my sock and Pit Bull shoe, and I got a little light-headed when I saw the swelling and the blue splotches.
"Nothing to it, old girl," I said. "We'll bind the blighter up and finish mowing. Stiff upper lip, you know. Wot?"
I ended up in bed with an icepack on my ankle. I tried to read, but somehow I couldn't get interested in what happened on the Confederate right at Fredericksburg.
This may have been because my ankle felt like it had been on the Confederate right at Fredericksburg.
And I thought that the same force that had decided I would never be able to fix anything or totally understand my computer had also decided I would break myself to pieces over a certain number of years.
I now have hurt each of my arms and legs in one way or another. Some of them twice.
If there were an Orthopedic Hall of Fame, I'd be in it.
I've lived in casts and slings and harnesses like strait jackets. I've gone for weeks without a decent bath. I hate icepacks.
It would be very nice if I could get a disorder that didn't involve bone or muscles or ligaments.
Right now I'd settle for beri-beri.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB