Falling Down in the Street

Written at 6:30 PM, Wednesday, August 11, 2004

I just fell down in the street, crossing 19th Street at 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. I was on the way back from the Auto Repair Shop at 3rd and 19th. Kiva was with me on the 26 foot retractable lead from Joan Nestle. I seemed to get my feet tangled up in my overall pant legs and fell face first into the street in front of a parked car. I landed on my hands and knees, and my hands were cushioned a bit by the collection of plastic bags I carried in my right hand and the handle to the lead in my left hand.

When I realized that I was on the ground there was a moment of silence as if the world had stopped, and then people came rushing to me from all around. I did not feel hurt as I gingerly tried everything out, and I was able to continue on home. Kiva stood there with me as I lay in the street for a few moments after I fell.

People looked at me with concern in their eyes. I don't know what they thought, perhaps that I was falling down drunk, perhaps that I had a seizure or attack, or perhaps that I was a toothless old hag (probably an alchoholic). As I walked away the man in the van I had fallen in front of was very solicitous of me. A younger woman with her elderly daughter was also very solicitous. I kept saying "I'm OK, I'm OK." Eventually people went on their ways, with backward glances at me.

I gimped along toward home, feeling some stiffness beyond normal in my right hip and knee. No skin was broken although both hands and my left knee were a bit scraped. As I write this about an hour later both of my hands are stiffening up from the strain of catching the weight of my body on the rough asphalt pavement, and my right should seems to be getting stiff too.

As I continued along I tried to understand why I had fallen. I had not been drinking, I had recently smoked, I was preoccupied with the repair bill for the exhaust system on my Jeep, and I was still feeling some effects from the large dose of Novocain I had received from my dentist at around 12:00PM (when I once again got to smell the acrid smoke of a high speed drill cutting the enamel of my incisor). Had I blacked out momentarily? I thought about the fear older people I have known have had about falling. So far so good for me.