It’s been raining quite a bit here in the hills. The humidity is high; I figure Guam might be a lot like this. When the weather is like this it, it’s hell on every aggravated joint, be it arthritis or courtesy of a current or healed broken bone….or bones.
As many of my tens of readers know, I was in a serious car accident 31 years ago. I was with an ex-boyfriend (heavy on the “ex” part) in his truck and he fell asleep at the wheel & drove off a freeway overpass and into a creek. I went through the windshield and slammed into the hood of the truck. In the process, I broke almost every major bone on my right side. I shattered my knee and had a compound comminuted fracture of the tibia & fibula. Those are fancy medical book learnin’ terms. Basically, the two bones that at one time comprised my shin, snapped in half & splintered.
I’ve had multiple surgeries to make corrections (none of them worked). I’ve been in chronic pain since the late afternoon of April 26, 1992.
Long story short, days like today are absolute hell for me. I limp. A lot. But I have basic needs that are more important than worrying that I walk like Chester from “Gunsmoke.
Anybody? Anyone?
Oh well, despite hurting to high heaven and loathing driving in the rain, my hair was in horrible shape. Phyllis Diller wig bad. And since vanity, thy name is Laurie, I chose to keep an appointment with my hair stylist.
Sara is a an artist. She understands these strands of nonsense, which since assisting my mother in the last two years of her life, had become extremely gray. Not silver, not champagne, but gray. Hold a brushed nickel fork next to my hair. You’ll think we’re related.
So, Sara cut my hair with her usual brilliance and I lauded her skills, tipped and walked out the door. In addition, I’m not tall. I’m short. Almost 5’1” if I tease and Aqua Net the hell out of the top of my head. And since I’ve been eating my new roommate, sister Karol’s cooking & duplicating her portion sizes, I’ve shed a few lbs; my pants are a bit looser and are consequently, a bit longer. Since I cannot stand the feel of wet clothes against my skin, I exited Sara’s salon holding up my pants as would an antebellum debutante would as she sashayed across a parlor while wearing her long dress and petticoat.
The salon is next to a small gym. Standing in the open door during cool down, was this incredibly short, ecto-endomorph of a guy, obviously trying to use weights and perhaps steroids to no longer be an ecto-endomorph. As I passed him, with my gray hair, Rubenesque bod, gimpy limp and holding up each pant leg, I offered a slight non-committal grin. I was merely trying to be social. As I hobbled by, he actually uttered a guttural, drawn out ”ick”.
Seriously. “Ick”.
He meant for me to hear it, We were just about five feet away from each other. I immediately looked back at his short, stocky, milky white body clad only shorts which was in and of itself trauma inducing, and said “Napoleanic loser”, to which he replied, “I don’t even like that ice cream!”
I laughed out loud, knowing in a matter of weeks, this still short idiot will be nothing but an enraged, tree stump of bought and paid for muscles with tiny, shriveled AND retracting testacles.
True story.
Laurie Kendrick 