Usually I come at you with something serious, something that disturbs me or even ticks me off. Today I want to be lighthearted. Maybe it's because the world seems to be going crazy from the ground up. To' up from the flo' up, as my friend likes to say. That's actually supposed to be "tore up from the floor up." Proper English would be "torn up from the floor up," but that doesn't rhyme and isn't nearly as funny. So here's the giggle story. It's okay to laugh at me about it. I did. Eventually.
Several years ago before our Winn-Dixie turned into a Harvey's, I was there doing a bit of shopping, and as I finished up and was leaving the checkout pushing my haul in the buggy (yes, in the South it's mostly a buggy but sometimes a cart) I slipped on something and landed on my back. You know, like in the cartoons. Exactly like that. I guess to some, like my daughter who has always had this uncontrollable tendency to laugh when someone takes a spill, this would be funny. Of course, people came running from all over as I lay there in my stupor. See, I was still trying to figure out how I got from a standing position, yea, even a healthy gait, to sprawled on my back on the cold, cold tile. I was standing, and then I was lying. I know it sounds like a page straight out of a Winnie-the-Pooh book, but there I was...gone from standing to lying in a nanosecond. That has to be a record. Someone check with Guinness while I finish the story.
It was a bit surreal, y'all. I paid for my items, started to push my buggy toward the exit, and all of a sudden I was laid out on my back looking around like a blooming idiot. I'm sure my mouth was gaping open and my eyes were big as saucers, as my mother used to say. Employees (Do they still call them that? Maybe it's associates. No, that's Walmart. Oh, well.) were bending over me and I started telling them, "I'm okay. No one's going to get sued." After they were sure I was steady on my feet (and no lawsuits were forthcoming) they left me alone and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to find out how I fell. You don't go from standing to lying in a billionth of a second for no reason. I went back to the checkout lane and there it was. The culprit. The antagonist. The villain. A smashed grape. A freshly smashed grape. I could tell because it had not become grotesquely smashed. It just looked like it had been smashed one really good time. (Not my grape. I didn't buy grapes that day.) Still...it was ugly. Wow. Well. Okay. Satisfied with my discovery, my groceries and I turned and headed for the exit...again...this time actually making it to the car and home.
There's something mildly satisfying about finding out why something happens. As far as all the craziness that's going on in the world right now, well, the end is near. That's not original with me. I'd like to claim it but I can't. That's from 2 Timothy 3:3-5 "But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power..."
Oops. I threw something serious at you again, didn't I? Honestly, this really did start out to be simply a funny story on myself.
