THE TIM CONWAY SHUFFLE

Too Fast for Conditions

At the LA Fitness I now go to, I am anonymous.  Nobody so much as looks at anybody, and I can watch CNN while I'm on the cardio machines.  Since I don't have cable at home, it's a little oasis of culture shock, several times a week.  I haven't fallen lately; that was my original motivation for joining a gym.  I've even built two garden beds and didn't trip once.  Of course, I am now thinking I should not have written that, because there's nothing like confidence to bring on a relapse.

I am a lifetime tripper/faller.  I used to walk a Cocker Spaniel named Sandy. He would stop very abruptly in the middle of the block as we walked briskly along, and down I would go.  Of course, it had to happen in front of neighbors.  Ted would always be there to help me up.  I walk two dogs now -- and thank the Gods of Staying Upright, neither is a sudden halter.

I fell into a large piece of Samsonite luggage one time in Yakima, Washington, in a hotel room with my twelve-year-old daughter.  It was the middle of the night.  It was dark.  I called out in the dark, "Caroline, do you have to go to the restroom?"  She didn't answer, so I got up to take myself to the restroom and down I went, into the luggage.  The thuds, bumps, and moans woke my daughter up and she turned on the light.  I was laying there inside the open Samsonite.  I think it was called "The Samsonite Wardrober."  It was big.

I think widows who live alone had better be careful, as I am now.  I'm skulking toward that infamous age bracket made notable by ubiquitous hip fractures.  I DO NOT want to spend any time in a rehab center because I didn't turn the light on to get up in the night, or because I left clothes on the floor, or forgot to look behind me when I backed away from the sink in the kitchen, etc.  I take my cell phone with me outside into the garden.  I reason that if I hurt myself and have to lay there a while, I might get hypothermia in addition to whatever is broken, and off to rehab I would go.  I don't want to leave my dogs, not even to go to the doctor or the grocery store, let alone be gone because I have fallen.  I don't think anyone in my situation would feel otherwise.  So, I beware.  I want all widows who are alone to beware. 

Since I have been a lifetime tripper/faller, I have had an opportunity to think long and hard about what I am doing to contribute to my mishaps.  In every case, I didn't think ahead, think about danger, think about what I was even doing.  I've spent most of my life being a bit on the "ready, fire, aim" side of how I run my private life.  Decisions....things that I do when I'm still or being a professional....only then do I become thoughtful.  A lifetime of domestic multi-tasking is a hard habit to break.  But I'm alone now, and I don't want to go to rehab.  So, I'm learning to slow down, think ahead, and develop a more careful gait. 

When I am slowing down and walking carefully, I can't help but remind myself of Tim Conway and his deliciously hilarious imitation of an old man walking.  When I was younger, I thought older people walked slowly because of pain.  I think there is additional stiffness to aging, yes.  Sometimes I get stiff, and I'm only barely in my sixties.  But now I look a little like Tim Conway when I walk from here to there in my house and garden.  Even if I'm not stiff, I'm slower because I don't want to fall.  There is no one around to pick me up and ask me if I'm okay, or put me in the wheelbarrow and wheel me down to emergency. 

Tomorrow is Ted's sixty-eighth birthday.  I was always able to do fun things for him on his birthday because being born on April Fools Day demanded it.  If he were a living person for just a day I would be making him a cake.  I would be willing to light that many candles for him, because I know if I forgot the lit candles and walked off somewhere to multi-task, he would smell the smoke and blow them out before I burned the house down.  But.....no cake.  No fire.  All is well.