I would venture to say that some of us are what we would call “getting up there in age”. I know I am, and I am reminded of that numerous times each day. Some days are better than others and some not, but I am grateful for all the mornings that find me still breathing with a beating heart.
Each one of us knows that the difference between life and death can be but a second, but in our minds that second always happens to someone else. A couple of weeks ago that second came very close to being me, and all it took was one bad decision.
As I age, it’s difficult for me to know and accept what I can and cannot do. My brain thinks like a young person, but my body…well, I’ll just say it’s not so young anymore and cannot do a lot of the things I used to take for granted. And that leads me to my bad decision.
Several years ago I had two pine trees close to my home cut down, fearful of a hurricane doing it for me and calling for action on my part. Everything went smoothly and when I was asked if I wanted the stumps ground, I remembered the holes forming over the years from other pines we had removed and said “no”. Just cut them fairly close to the ground I said which turned out to be not too close. But that was okay. Then. Yet as I looked out my screened porch day after day, year after year, those very slowly rotting tree stumps became somewhat of a thorn in my side. They were rotting but contrary to what we believe and are told by pest control people, termites can make a meal last forever. And so I watched from one day to the next, one week to the next, one month to the next, one year to the next until ten years had gone by and those stumps continued to be eyesores. My patience evaporated, and one afternoon a few weeks ago I decided to do something about the crumbling stubs sticking up out of the ground. Whenever my lawn guy came, I noticed he would bump the stumps with his mower, and some of the wood would crumble. On comes the light bulb, unfortunately.
I deduced that I could do the same thing with a sledge hammer, and after the lawn person had vamoosed, I went into my garage to locate the named tool. I located it in between some heavy objects and it took some doing to unlodge it. I should have paid attention and have let this mild obstruction divert my plans. But I was more determined than that. After yanking and pulling, I managed to loosen the hold on it, and grabbing it near the bottom for more leverage, I made my way back through the house and the back porch to position myself at one of the stumps in question. I found that just swinging it a little was no small feat. It was heavy for my feeble strength. But I did manage to get in a few swipes and broke off about half of the remaining wood, littering the surrounding area with chips. However, some parts of the stumps were like concrete and only went “boing” upon contact with the sledge hammer. But I wasn’t discouraged, maybe try it again in a week or so. Did I mention the temperature was in the nineties with humidity to match?
I grabbed the sledgehammer near the top of the handle and slowly made my way back inside and into the house and to the garage door. I was hot and tired. I opened the door, lifted the sledge hammer off the floor where I had rested it for a moment and swung it over the 4” step- down into the garage, a huge mistake. The heft of that over ten pound hammer and the three foot length of the handle acted like I was on the end of a “crack the whip”. Do you remember that little game?
Before my brain could catch up, the momentum created by that swing pulled me out into the garage faster than my feet were capable of going and the inevitable happened. I stumbled and fell into a multitude of hanging tools on the side wall that cascaded over me like a hail storm finally coming to a stop at the wet and dry vac parked about six feet away from the door. I was resting on one knee, still holding onto the handle of the sledgehammer for dear life! If only I had had one of those surveillance cameras. I would have loved to have seen the replay!
So, after the fall, a little stunned and feeling like a fool, I realized blood was running down my cheek. One of those thingies on the wall had aimed itself at my right eye, missing it by the proverbial hair, cutting the skin and giving me an extra laugh line. I took a moment to thank God that I could still see.
And then I raised myself up off the one knee and the sledgehammer that I continued to hang onto, and looking at all the debris, I felt pretty lucky indeed. Later, other than some bruising and a black eye, life seemed good again. Very good. And I promised whoever was in charge (and it looks like it may have been me) to never pick up a sledgehammer again!
