John Carlson: Falling Can Be Bad, And Good

It’s a short trip from down here to a long stay at Happy Acres. Photo by Nancy Carlson.It’s a short trip from down here to a long stay at Happy Acres. Photo by Nancy Carlson.

By John Carlson—

September was Fall Prevention Month, which I celebrated by not falling.

Nancy is a real stickler about this, always warning me not to fall, not that I usually have much choice in the matter. Her reasoning is, it’s a short trip from sprawling on the deck at the back of your house to drooling on your jammies in a nursing home. Having once spent three weeks in a nursing home recovering from spinal surgery, I don’t particularly want to return.

Well, except I wouldn’t mind returning for the free booze this place passed out during Happy Hour on Fridays.

And I’d also like to be there for the meals, because the food was exceptionally good. You could order a couple decent cheeseburgers every day for lunch, along with fries, coleslaw and dessert, and nobody thought a thing about it.

And the breakfasts! Not being much of a morning eater, I never ordered more than an English muffin. But my roomie? He was a breakfast-chomping champion, ordering a cavalcade of cholesterol that included eggs, bacon, sausage and home fries topped with a doughnut every morning, all at no discernible detriment to his health!

He’s dead now, of course, may he Rest In Peace. But if they had tried to discharge him to cut back on the breakfast bills he was piling up, it would have taken six husky attendants to drag him outa there.

But back to falls …

I was there because I was a fall risk. We discovered this in the recovery room when they helped me from bed, then let go of me to check my mobility. Turned out I was mobile as heck, but only vertically, meaning straight down to the floor. Horizontally? My best shot at mobility was scooting around a room on my tush.

While other falls have faded into obscurity, that was the first most notable fall of my life.

They soon had me walking again, however, but more warily now, plodding along with one foot deliberately planted in front of the other. And the fact was if I did fall, it was usually a minor tumble back home, with my landing cushioned by thick carpeting.

True, I’d taken a far bigger fall in 1972 when, as a founding member of Taylor University’s newly-formed Parachute Club, I was flown aloft for my first jump. Back then you didn’t get to enjoy the thrill of free fall like first-time jumpers do today, securely harnessed to their instructors. On the other hand, in your very first jump, when you stepped out of that Cessna 180 into 2800 feet of thin-air, you did it all by yourself.

Fortunately, an entire morning’s training had been devoted to handling potential emergencies. Coming down in trees. Coming down in power lines. What to do if your main chute failed to open. Studying each other afterward, we club members noticed a new sense of confidence in our fellow jumpers’ eyes.

By this I mean we were confident if something screwed up, we were gonna die.

Anyway, I remember thinking that first step was a doozy. But when the canopy automatically opened, jerking the parachute’s straps hard into my groin, I sighed with relief.  Being kicked in the crotch had never felt so good. Back on the ground, we guys high-fived each other like hotshots. Left unsaid was the fact that a short while before, we’d been down on our knees begging God, Jesus and any other deity that’d listen to wrap us in divine protection. As this was going on, unbelievably, the cute little coeds in our club were milling excitedly around the airplane, waving their hands and shouting, “Me next!!! Me next!!!”

That was the second most notable fall of my life.

By the way, a few years ago as I told this harrowing tale of my fall to Jerry O’Neal, my pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, he listened sympathetically. Then he nonchalantly mentioned he’d made forty low-altitude jumps while training to become an Army Ranger after graduating from West Point.

Well ladefrickin’da, I told myself.

There have been a smattering of other falls in recent years. They include the night I dreamed movie star Jennifer Lawrence glided through my bedroom door wearing a filmy negligee while seductively carrying a 16-inch Pizza King Royal Feast with extra cheese, causing me to fall out of bed.

But falling is hardly a habit with me, even though yeah, I should account for the third most notable fall in my life. This was at spectacular singer Jennie DeVoe’s parents’ house, where we were meeting for the very first time to see if she was interested in my writing a book about her.

Everything had gone just hunky-dory when, fetching something from my car, I tripped while walking through their garage. A split second later I was flat on the floor, my arms and legs waving in the air like an overturned stinkbug’s.

Having rushed to my aid, Jennie asked, “Are you hurt?”

“Only my pride,” I answered.

A few months later she presented me with a custom-made cane that I treasure and everybody else admires. Eighteen months or so after that, we published “Jennie DeVoe On the Record: Life, Music & Elvis Dust.”

So that’s pretty much the history of notable falls in my life. Well, except for the fourth, which happened in 1982 when I fell for Nancy Briggs Huber, the wonderful woman who is now my wife of 39 years.

As already noted, some falls work out way better than others.

 


John’s weekly columns are sponsored by Beasley & Gilkison, Muncie’s trusted attorneys for over 120 years.

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A former longtime feature writer and columnist for The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana, John Carlson is a storyteller with an unflagging appreciation for the wonderful people of East Central Indiana and the tales of their lives, be they funny, poignant, inspirational or all three.  John’s columns appear on MuncieJournal.com every Friday.