Morning Jog of Death

I have a Netfriend (meaning I've never actually met her but we converse through email and Facebook) and she's a straight up hysterical blogger. I promise you that virtually nothing can happen during her day and she can still spin a trip to Starbucks into the funniest tale you've ever read. (Hi Tammy! You slay me. In a good way. Not in an actual death sort of way. Although, I imagine that if we faced off we could borrow our sons' Nerf swords and have quite the dual.) Anyway. Lately, I've sat down to write and thought to myself, "Self, nothing funny, poignant, or noteworthy happened today. Still, you should try to write something. WWTS?" (That's code for What Would Tammy Say because, y'all, Tammy would turn that Not-Much-of-a-Day into one good read.)

Today, I sat looking at my white screen, wondering what, if anything I could write about and then suddenly I thought to myself, HOW COULD I EVER FORGET, EVEN FOR ONE SECOND, THE FACT THAT I TUMBLED HEAD OVER FEET AND SPRAWLED OUT ON THE SIDEWALK FOR EVERYONE TO SEE? So now I've decided that funny stuff is more than likely happening to me on an hourly basis and perhaps some sort of early onset dementia is preventing me from remembering it by the time evening comes. Or smelly boys. They might be more to blame for my living on my very last brain cell than actual dementia.

Last year, Garrett ran track (stay with me, this isn't me giving a demonstration on how I'm down to just one living brain cell). He did really great once he shaped up. The first few practices though, they were brutal. He was holding his chest and crying and telling me he was dying and for a few seconds there, I thought my six-year-old was experiencing actual cardiac arrest. Alas, he just wasn't really in great running shape. It took a few weeks. Track starts again in two weeks and I've decided to help him get ready ahead of time, so those first few practices don't attempt murder on his young life.

We've been running around the block. It's a distance of not quite a mile.

It was a party this morning. There was Garrett, off in the lead. I brought up the rear with Matthew--who squeals in delight about how fun running is as long as we're going downhill but who sobs in great hysterics if there is so much as a slight incline--and the old and chubby and lazy golden retriever. Garrett got quite a bit ahead because, at the start of our run, our altitude increases by roughly twelve inches and Matthew was having none of it. He cried and carried on while I stood, jogging in place, reminding him that HE CHOSE TO RUN AND NOT RIDE HIS BIKE AND THEREFORE HE NEEDED TO PICK UP THE PACE AND TURN OFF THE TEARS BEFORE HIS BROTHER GOT SO FAR AHEAD OF US THAT WE NEVER SAW HIM AGAIN! This all happened in front of a man who was doing yard work and watching the scene unfold as though I was the very worst mother in the history of mothers and, yes, that includes Joan Crawford.

The slight incline evened out. Matthew stopped crying. We kept running. Garrett was a small dot on the horizon that I occasionally hollered at. "Great job! Keep going!" We ran along the busy street. Eventually, we turned the corner onto a less busy street (read: HALLELUJAH!) and kept jogging. Matthew was just a few feet behind me. The dog was beside me. Said canine kept having difficulty making up his mind. Did he want to be on the sidewalk or did he want to be on the street? Really, I think he wanted to be home, resting peacefully on the floor, gnawing on rawhide. As we ran along, he switched back and forth. Down onto the street. Up onto the sidewalk. Down onto the street.

And then it happened.

He hopped back up onto the sidewalk and somehow fate and the stars aligned and my lovably moronic dog put his right paw directly in my path. I saw it all happening in slow motion. The paw in my way. My foot crashing into it. The ground getting closer. Closer now. Ever closer.

It's been a long time since I've just fallen to the ground. I remember being little and seeing it all happening so slowly. Trying to right the body. Waiting for gravity to work it's magic. Wondering how it would hurt. Lemme just tell you. NOTHING CHANGES. That's exactly how it all happened. The only difference is I'm 32 now. I don't bounce. 

Up and over the dog I went. He stopped abruptly--his neck being tethered to the leash in my hand, after all. I threw my hands out in front of me, landed hard on my right knee and hip, and skidded to a stop. "MOM!" the five-year-old behind me screamed, "Are you okay?" 

"Beck! YOU IDIOT!" I yelled at the poor dog who was already sitting beside me with a look of shame. I instantly felt bad because, well, he's a dog. It's not as though he planned to cut me off--box me out, body slam me--just to see what kind of reaction he could get. I popped up almost instantly because as far as I'm concerned, the faster someone gets up after a humiliating fall, the more face they save.

My knee was skinned and bleeding. My hands were scraped. My hip was sore and welted (although I didn't discover the welting until I got home on account of the fact that I didn't think it would be a good idea to pull my pants down right there on the sidewalk). But my forearm got the worst of it.

This picture was taken about 12 hours after it happened. The photo DOES NOT do it justice. It just looks like a smallish scrape. I assure you that it is really A HORRIBLE, PAINFUL, WAR WOUND OF DEATH.

We ran on.

When we got back to the house, Garrett was waiting. "What took you so long?" he asked. I held up my arm. At that point, blood was dripping toward my wrist. "OH MY GOSH! WHAT HAPPENED?"

"The dog--" I started to say. But then Matthew shoved past me.

"It was like this. I saw the whole thing. Becky--well, Becky--he came up and he stuck his paw out like this," he demonstrated. "And then mom's foot hit Beck's paw like this," more action moves. "An THEN mom went like this..." Apparently, I acrobatically cartwheeled through the air, landed, with a thud, on my side, and proceeded to skid several feet. At least, that's how Matthew remembers it. 

I'll take it. It sounds a lot better than, "My 32-year-old mother couldn't keep herself from falling when the dog cut her off." Additionally, I'm pretending that the structure of my knee hasn't possibly been compromised and that it doesn't hurt every time I take a step.