I heard a commotion while stepping off the escalator at Denver International Airport a few weeks ago.
A family group was pointing to the moving floor and screaming, “Your shoestring’s caught! Hey guys, her shoestring’s caught!” They poured off alongside me, and we all looked back to see a frightened ten-year-old staring down at her captured shoe. A clump of other travelers were bunching up behind her. I turned around and dove to the floor amidst several pairs of walking legs, my backpack awkwardly crashing into the base of my neck.
As I was about to yank the girl’s shoestring, her own desperate tugs must’ve done the job. She suddenly came free and walked out onto solid ground. Heading to my gate, I glanced back to see her tying her shoe, in cool shock, while her mom leaned into her face and offered pats on the back.
Floors, the ground, low things have always captured my attention. Maybe it’s because I’m perennially Small.
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Yesterday as I wrote this piece, WXPN’s Throwback Thursday was playing all funk music. Kool & The Gang’s Jungle Boogie became my writing soundtrack. Get down get down go the opening lines. I put the video at the bottom so you won’t miss out. 🎸Get down? Where? On the dance floor, of course, where I so often find myself literally and metaphorically.
While others’ heads are in the clouds, mine is on the boards. If not to launch a Hot Wheels® car on a drag strip with Sasha, then to slither around with her like Prince Randian “The Caterpillar Man,” the limbless wonder who routinely rolled cigarettes and smoked them before slack-jawed sideshow goers.
In similar shock, my grandgirl once stood amazed at how low and silly Tommy can get. Now, she expects nothing less than floor time, and I’m happy to indulge her.
The low life, I suppose, began in the the 1970’s when shag carpeting was a kind of fluoride in Watsontown, PA. It was everywhere. It was rough and smelt of dust. So many nights I lay dozing off in front of our Zenith TV watching The World of Disney or Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins while my Mom shrieked,
Tommy, you’re sleeping. Go to bed!
I’d ratchet myself up in a stupor and find my way up the three steps of our split-level to crash under a poster of Evel Knievel. Dr. Evel certainly was well-acquainted with the floor, the macadam kind. What a service he provided to boy-kind through his spectacular crashes!
While plying my own daredevil skills on my Sears Gremlin bike, I was hyper-aware of the terrain beneath me, not only through mishaps but also through curiosity. I was fascinated by the newly laid tar on Fourth Street that would heat up in the summer after a rain. Dismounting my steed, I’d kneel down to puncture the thin, warm bubbles with my finger tips, releasing the cool water inside.
My acquaintance with the ground has also come through unexpected calamity.
Around 2005 I walked two blocks down College Avenue for a scheduled blood draw at Lancaster Regional Medical Center. Feeling pretty good and wearing black soccer shorts, I mulled over my strategy for not fainting. I don’t give blood without a fright. Under the florescent sheen of the outpatient room, I paged through Car & Driver. A prim and cute nurse in her late 20’s came in and blurted, “Boy, he has cute legs!”
Is she really complimenting me, or buttering me up for the kill?
A second nurse chimed in. “Oh, yes, he sure does!”
Flattery will get you nowhere. Just wait and see.
A matronly nurse commenced my blood-letting, a procedure that some people have a psychological aversion to. I am “some people.” The longer the procedure takes, the higher the probability I’ll wither. These days, I’m insistent with my phlebotomists: “Please just tell me when you’re done.” (So I can sigh and thank God I made it through.) Unaware that she was finished, I sheepishly spoke up, “I feel faint.”
She had me sitting back in a recliner, so the moment I leaned forward to put my head between my legs, I blacked out. Emerging to consciousness with a pounding headache, I found myself groping pathetically on the floor. My knee hurt like crazy too. It had taken the impact before my head bashed the cold, tile surface. Two more nurses plus the two who originally shouted Hosanna over my legs were now screaming at me: “Mr. Becker! Don’t move! You’re OK! Don’t move!”
I lay there dazed and confused. They stood above me in a football huddle, terrified.
The head nurse took over the triage, helping me back in my chair and offering me apple juice.
Oh, I’m so sorry! You must’ve fallen forward the moment I turned my back! We were very concerned for you. You were convulsing. I’m so glad you’re OK. I’m so sorry, Mr. Becker!
She went on like this and insisted on wheeling me to the ER for examination. I tried to play it cool, but like the girl at the airport, I’m sure my face betrayed the shock of a survivor. The emergency doctor, a calm gentleman in his 60’s, glibly looked me over and said, “You’ve got a bump on your head. Go home.” His army demeanor was a strange comfort that manned me up after all the fuss I had endured.
Becky drove two blocks to pick me up, and I missed my walk home, which would have fascinated me with sidewalk cracks.
The tile floor was a rude awakening, but at least it prevented me from hurtling down through layers of geology to a burning terminus of magma. That’s the great thing about the ground that stops you. You know where you stand, and you can’t go any further. Oh, blessed gravity. Who needs to get high when you can get low?
And now, get down with me, y’all….