Falling Down in Europe and Other Places - Chapter I

Dear Reader,

I'm sure at one time or another you've had a fall or at least tripped while traveling, which I know from personal experience can be embarassing but as long as no one gets hurt it can be laughed about later. My husband has certainly had his share of falls and other accidents on our travels and I've had a few myself lately. This was one of his worst.

We were up in Vancouver, Canada just being tourists but of course, being us, we had to find odd things to do. John and I had just finished a nice lunch and inspected some of the shops on a little island right in the middle of the city but the name escapes me at the moment. There are some nice pleasure boats docked there and some small manufacturers of sailing equipment and leather goods. It was interesting.

As we wandered away from the crowds we found a nice little park to relax in and there hanging from a very large tree was a rope swing. I love rope swings, always have. And it had been a long time since I'd been on one so I asked John if he would push me. It was a very long rope going way to the top of the tree and so high off the ground I had to make a running start to leap onto the knot at the bottom. Needless to say my feet didn't reach the ground at all so I had to depend on John to push me.

John said he would gladly push me and began to push harder and harder. The harder he pushed the more dangerously close I came to the tree trunk. I began to get a little scared but John only laughed and called me a whimp, that's one of the pet names we call each other. He was laughing and pushing harder and harder as I began to beg him to stop but he wouldn't. He just kept pushing me harder and each time bringing me closer to that tree trunk. John insisted there was no chance I would hit the tree but I couldn't help that feeling of doom. I began to yell at him to stop it but he didn't answer me so I kept swinging away.

After a few minutes passed I thought I heard a thump but couldn't turn to see what it might be. I was beginning to slow down now and was greatly relieved. I asked John if he would help me stop since I was unable to drag my feet but he didn't answer once again so I had to sit there and swing for awhile longer until I could jump off the rope.

When I did finally jump I didn't see John anywhere. I looked all around and he was nowhere to be found. I called his name and got no answer. This was way beyond his usual hijinks and I began to worry. I walked over to the edge of the lawn where there was a small cliff with about a 6 foot drop off to a gravel river bank. And there he was lying on his back stunned and dazed. Apparently, he had backed up too far while pushing me harder and stepped right off the cliff landing on his back.

Once I established that he was not unconscious and wasn't in any terrible pain, just a bruised ego mainly, I helped brush him off and we climbed back into the park. As he stumbled along I was picking weeds and gravel off of his clothes and then we both started to laugh. It was pretty darned funny that he fell off a cliff because he was being mean to me and got his comeuppance almost immediately. This was that kind of laughter you have after some fright or something scary has happened and it's a relief that everything is alright.

We both plopped onto the ground and just started rolling and laughing uncontrollably. Passersby would stare at us while we laughed and laughed but we didn't care. We were just happy to be there. Younger couples were making out in the bushes and had to leave because our laughter was just too disturbing. It seemed like just another typical travel day.

A month later John woke up and his arm had gone completely numb and he had lost all feeling in it. He was also experiencing severe back pain. This went on for at least a month before he saw a doctor and then had X-rays and saw a specialist who told John he had an herniated disc. This is pretty serious and the surgery can be worse than the pain so John went through painful physical therapy instead which did eventually help.

His doctor asked John if he'd been in an auto accident but John said no. So he asked John if he had had a bad fall or any other type of accident but John couldn't think of any at all. He guessed that perhaps he had injured himself playing basketball with my nephew and his friend, Hoss. John said they were pretty rough. The doctor didn't believe it. He advised that an injury of this nature would require a major impact directly to the spine. We were out of ideas.

One evening perhaps three or four months later, my sister and a friend were having dinner at our place. We had been regaling them with some of our funnier travel stories when my sister interjected "Tell her about John falling off the cliff and the rope swing." She said that one's hilarious to her friend. So John started to tell his version were he wasn't really being mean to me at all so I had to interject how scared I was and then suddenly we both stopped dumbfounded realizing simultaneously that this was the accident which had caused his back injury! It was a ridiculous moment because it was so obvious. Then we had to explain the whole thing to my sister's friend why we didn't know what caused his injury and that the incident had completely slipped our minds. Or maybe our brains had slipped our minds?

John's back will never be the same again but he is doing much better and keeping up his excercises. I feel that there is a lesson to be learned from this episode. If you tease someone to the point of all distraction, it may just come back and bite you in the butt. Lesson learned? I don't think so.

Until next time,