Falling

I fell the other night. Missed a step in a dimly lit parking lot. Lay on my side. People were entering and exiting a basketball game. Embarrassing.
A man helped me up. “You’re all right,” he said.
I wasn’t. I could barely put weight on my left leg. Entire families circling around me, mothers warning of dark steps, the words “be careful” echoing. Somehow I limped to my car, drove home, and pressed an ice pack onto the swollen thigh. Swelling is your body’s way of telling you you’re a clumsy fool.
Three days later there’s been some improvement, but I still have trouble standing. Only my hours at the gym prevented this fall from being worse. In the parking lot, surrounded by pitying strangers, I wanted to drop my pants and shout, “Yes, I’m old, but look at my quad muscles!”
Here’s the thing about falls – no matter how young and vibrant you think you are, when you’re lying there seeing the concern on people’s faces, you know you’re old. When I was a teen and young man, taking a flop was cause for laughs, snarky remarks. As I hit middle age I could sense less laughter, more anxious responses. The last few years, every single time I’ve fallen someone has offered help, the same way I do to really old people lying on the ground.
It’s the looking helpless part that upsets me. The loss of control of this particular situation.
If I make a bonehead move in my car and someone beeps in anger, I am still the master of the wheel and can respond in a manly way. Like flipping the bird or screaming an obscenity. But sprawled supine and twisted, grimacing in pain, makes one feel impotent, emasculated. Which brings me to women falling.
Anytime a woman trips and goes over, no matter what her age, people come running. Cries of concern, helping hands from all directions. People bring cold water and small, easily digestible snacks. Others curse the ground where she lays. After assisting the poor lady to her feet, they walk a block with her just to make sure she’s okay. This is blatantly unfair. Guys bruise just as easily. We can’t cry, but moaning should be more respected. I can still defend myself and those weaker and be a moaner. I can still moan and be a man, dammit.
When kids fall, adults who are not family move as far away as feasible. The possibility of helping them up is not on the menu. Touching someone else’s child is now actionable on so many levels. If the kid cries, you have to sign forms to offer a hankie.
When a man feels he is going to fall, he needs to gather himself in a flash, try to hit and roll, scramble to his feet. Make onlookers think it was simply an exercise maneuver or you’re busting a break dance move. If your eyeglasses go flying, your hat pops off, and your shoe winds up 20 feet away, you may as well lay there and fake unconsciousness. And if it happens when you’re squiring a woman, quietly decide your life is over. If you just lie there long enough, you’ll bleed out and cease further humiliation.
Ice is never an excuse. Not for real men. – Joe Del Priore