I bring this up because mom is out here visiting right now, and the thing is, she fell in the grocery store last week. One of those big metal wheeled ladders that they use to stock the upper shelves was blocking the shelf that she wanted something from, so she tried to climb through it, tripped on the metal ankle-level bar, and smashed the side of her face in against one of the vertical supports. Gushed blood everywhere, had to get 4 stitches in the side of her face, and now is sporting a HUGE shiner.
Which means a number of things. First, it meant that our first activity together upon her arrival was for me to take her down to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation's urgent care facility to get the stitches taken out, since her doctor told her they should come out on what turned out to be her first day here. It had been almost 3 whole weeks since the last time I had to deal with a medical issue, so I'd been feeling a void in my life anyhow.
But it also means that whenever we walk up to a counter together, for lunch or something, people look at her, see her enormous black eye, and then look at me. And I can see them thinking. It's painfully obvious what they're thinking- "Oh my god, is he BEATING this poor old woman? Does he HIT her??"
After the first few times, I got so annoyed, I almost wanted to pre-emptively shout "SHE FELL IN THE STORE, GODDAMMIT!!", but let's face it- that isn't going to help. In fact, it's just going to make it worse. "Riiiiiiight," they'll think, "She fell in the store. Uh huh. Didn't Suzanne Vega write a song about that?"
Yes, she did. You probably remember it:
"My name is Mary
I fell in the grocery store
I live in Saint Loo-ee
You've probably never been there before.
If you see me
With a black eye
And I'm there with a
Shifty looking kinda guy
Just don't ask me what it is
Just don't ask me what it is
Just don't ask me, what it is."
And of course, it doesn't help that I look nothing like her, so it's not like people can assume I'm her son or something. People probably just think I'm some thug that's beating up an old woman for her social security checks.
The irony of that, especially with the grocery store connection, is that when I was about 3, my mom would often take me grocery shopping. My grandma always used to sing an old song called "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" to me to make me go to sleep, and I really liked it, so while I was sitting there in the grocery cart I would amuse myself by singing that song at the top of my lungs. Despite how obviously adorable that is, my mom was a little embarrassed by the spectacle I made of myself, bellowing that song continuously, barely even stopping to breathe, so she would park the cart at one end of the aisle, and then walk up that aisle and down the next, grabbing everything she needed in her hands, all the while pretending like I wasn't her kid- like she really had no idea whose little brown kid that was belting out old showtunes. And it probably worked, since I look nothing like her.
But in the great cycle of life, we often switch roles with our parents, and now I find myself shaking my head embarrassedly at my mother's grocery store antics:
Mom: "So, I think this next year I'm going to focus on my health. I need to keep exercising and stuff. Then I'll figure out what I'm going to do next."
Me: "That sounds like a great plan, mom. A couple of steps toward that goal, that you might want to seriously consider, are: (1) not forgetting to take your damn medicine all the time, and (2) not doing stupid shit like climbing around a metal ladder like you're a frickin' chimpanzee, rather than ask the 23-year-old stock boy to move it for you. I think you should make those things part of your health strategy."
So for all you dear readers who have read the stories in this blog and wondered to yourselves: "Why the hell does he do such stupid shit all the time?", I have a simple, one-word answer for you:
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