The other day a student rushed up for a hug. Then she looked at me and asked, "Why do you have two different shoes on?"
I looked down at my feet. Sure enough, the left foot wore a blue shoe, the right one a brown. I have taken to wearing Crocs since a bout with plantar fasciitis so at least I was wearing the same style shoe. They were just not the same color.
I grinned at her. "It's weird shoe day, didn't you get the notice?" I asked. She shook her head. Then she took off down the hall to ask her friends if it really was weird shoe day. I ducked into my classroom. Later in the day I saw the same student in the hall. "I think you're the only one who got the weird shoe day notice, Ms. Clarke," she confided. "No one else did!"
Well. J burst out laughing when I related the story to her and told me about the day she went to work with her skirt on inside out. If anyone noticed they didn't mention it. Finally a student asked her why she had those funny threads on her skirt. J looked down. Sure enough, all her seams were showing. She hustled into the women's room and righted herself. "It was dark when I got dressed," she made excuse. I know. It's dark in my closet, too.
As if looking foolish wasn't enough for the day, that night I got out of bed to use the facilities. I caught my foot on a basket of magazines that I've avoided on my nightly trips for the past 8 years. My balance, never good since an inner ear infection, deserted me completely and I fell. Fortunately a chair stopped my body and the china cabinet stopped my face. I crept painfully into the bathroom to inspect the damage, fully expecting to see the beginnings of a black eye and a split lip. I thought I detected some minor swelling and two red spots on chin and forehead but the next morning there was not a mark on my face. You'd think I'd at least have had a bruise to show for all the pain, some swelling and a shiner to brag about.
"That's how it starts, Memere," my daughter-in-law said ominously when I joked to her about being old and falling. "I was able to get up by myself, though," I reminded her, feeling suddenly much older. While we spoke, I moved the offending magazine basket.
I am not yet, nor do I want to be, at the emergency-call-button-night-light-on-clear-path-to-the-bathroom stage of old. J says we just have to take these things in stride. At least, she reminds me, we're still laughing at our mishaps. I just wish I wasn't laughing so often!
