I've Fallen and My Name's Not Chuck

It’s the name of my next book that will contain all the jumbled meanderings of a mixed up, shook up, slightly out of balance, redneck mind. Remember the commercial where the older woman has fallen and says, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up?" Yeah I’ve fallen a few times, sometimes I couldn’t get up, sometimes I shouldn’t have gotten up and one time I was hit by a car and fell up, which hurts much worse than falling down.

I’ve been knocked down, thrown down, tripped and flipped. I’ve been kicked out, picked out and run out of more places than most people will admit to running into. I’ve had my doubts about entering some places, but always shrugged and went in any way; it’s the price you pay for being from the rural south or more aptly for being proud that you are.

I’ve traveled in boats that had forgotten their most important function, which was to float, which taught me swimming was pretty important after all. I've been on trains that appeared to smoke, drink and cuss, and ones that ran faster than any pea brained Georgia boy should go. I’ve been on big planes, medium planes and a few planes that looked like Gomer had been working on them using cheap tools stamped with "Made in Taiwan". What exactly did I think I was going to do if one of those trains jumped the tracks at a gazillion miles an hour in Istanbul, Turkey? What if some of that Duct Tape Gomer had been using peeled off at 5,000 feet and one of those planes had decided it needed to pull over at an inopportune time?

I can tell you this, all the swimming in the world ain’t gonna help much and there is no roadside assistance up there. I think ambulances and emergency vehicles carry a big spatula with them, which amounts to roadside assistance for those in planes and fast trains. I remember my step-dad throwing me off the end of the dock and saying, "Sink or swim." Even as dumb as that was, at least he never stood in the yard and tossed me into the air repeatedly, yelling, "Fly, you little so-and-so, fly." In a plane there is only one way to go if the service engine soon light comes on. I hate it when that thing comes on in a car, but have no desire for it to start flashing on a plane. I’ve avoided Submarines more diligently as there is only one way to go and you’re halfway there already.

Life will pump you, bump you and dump you. I’ve been on that floor more than once and never, even when I was inebriated, was I ever a Chuck. In fact, most of us have fallen and our names have never been Chuck. I have no idea why this line is so funny to me, but it is, so take that.

Let’s talk about another great commercial from the past that deals with the same topic. How did you get to the Grand Canyon? The camera pulls back as people who make me look young spin around in circles on their Shovearounds at the edge of the canyon rim. Shovearound, shovearound, shovearound echoes across the distance and then they inform you that if you were a good boy or girl the government will pay and you’ll get yours at no cost to you.

I wasn’t that good, OK, I ain’t that good now and have a terrible feeling the government is already looking for a way to either take my birthday or make me move to Haiti. I’m afraid they’ll make the decision or pass the required law about the time I’m ready for SSI, it’s what I’d do, it’s what the insurance companies do. Hey, when it’s time to retire just put us in a line for some government program; most of us will die standing in that line before actually applying for the program the line was created to serve.

So, if I’m to ever own a Shovearound my writing must eventually make me independently wealthy. I’ll probably own one of those aluminum walkers without a motor and I’ll end up stumbling around blowing through my lips and making little sounds with them, which mimic whatever sounds Shoverarounds make. I’m pretty sure they are electric and make no sound, which makes my retirement look pretty bleak.

If my writing does eventually take off, I’m having one with a hopped up motor and racing strips. I want to be the fastest slow person on my block. I still chuckle when I remember Evil Bo Weevil trying to jump the Snake River Canyon on a Shovearound on steroids.  He was always one of my heroes — as long as he was alive I could never be the dumbest person on earth.