Aging Is a Slap Stick Sport

Have you seen the Grace and Frankie episode where Jane Fonda/Grace falls and can’t get up, then Lily Tomlin/Frankie gets pulled down trying to help and then they both can’t get up? It’s slapstick humor at its best. Yeah, that’s about right in my world.

I’m one of those people. Also one who laughs in the face of adversity. HAHA adversity, I laugh in your face.

That’s come in handy the last three days. On the Saturday before the 4th of July, I slipped on a step into a parking lot and fell. No big deal. I’m a martial artist. I know how to fall.

You’d think. You would be wrong.

Somehow, in one simple trip and fall, I managed to break both ankles.

I’m talented in so many more ways than just writing.

Fortunately my niece was with me and she, along with a guy from the place we had just left, lifted me into the car and she insisted we go to the ER. Good thing for me she didn’t inherit my throw caution to the wind attitude.

Not that I wasn’t pretty darned sure it was broken. You can sometimes bear weight briefly on a sprain, as I knew from many years of dance and Aikido. Not so much on a broken ankle. I wasn’t sure about one of them, but I could feel bones move in the other. I have a high pain tolerance, but that’s a feeling you cannot ignore.

. . .

I’d gotten a new pedicure earlier that day, and in preparation had shaved my legs. I informed the ER nurses and doctor how lucky they were I’d done that just for them, and gave them the firm rule they were not to mar my glittery, gold toenails.

I then reiterated that to the night nurses, the orthopedic surgeon, the assisting surgical nurse, and the respiratory therapist, who informed me she didn’t need to go near my toes, as I breathe from the other end. The anesthesiologist said the same. As far as I can tell, which is pretty far because of the glitter, everyone followed the golden rule.

When they asked where I lived, I answered, “So close we could walk there. Well, you could, not me.”

From there, it was me keeping the entire staff entertained. I figure, if you make them laugh, they’ll like and remember you, and therefore be more willing to come running when I need my banana boat pee thingie replaced or adjusted. And they have.

The banana boat pee thingie was invented by a genius. She didn’t name it that, I did. I don’t know her name but I intend to find out and build a monument to her. Perhaps shaped like a banana boat.

Jason Leung on Unsplash

The banana boat pee thingie is shaped like, you guessed it, a tiny banana boat. It fits between my legs and right over what comedy writer Jenny Lawson calls my lady garden.

Well, she doesn’t call my personal one my lady garden because she doesn’t know me like that. So far, three female and one male nurse DO know me like that now. If you’re a cis-gendered hetero or hetero flexible woman, you haven’t lived until a cute, tattooed male nurse fits a tiny banana boat onto your lady garden.

It attaches to the lady garden through suction. Yes, I said suction. It has a wick-away lining. A tube attaches it to a vacuum, and when you pee, the banana boat wicks it into the vacuum tube to a large pee cup in the sky. It’s transformative.

Stay tuned for more on the Perils of Carol and the Adventures of Aging.

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This post was previously published on Carol Lennox.

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