A Friend in Need...

So yesterday I take a spill on the wet leaves on my patio. One minute I’m filling the bird feeders; the next minute, BAM, I’m on my butt. I look up to see if The Man Who Is Reading The Sports’ Page just inside the window, about ten feet away from where I am lying on the patio, will notice my distress. But... I am not Brett Favre. Or even Aaron Rodgers. I'm on my own. I drag my body to an upright position. I think: next time I'll bring my cell phone when I go out to fill the bird feeders, so I can call The Man if I break a leg or something.

This morning I call my walking buddy, Hilde, and tell her what happened. Her Man doesn’t do the household upkeep stuff that My Man does. Hilde doesn't just fill the feeders. She does it all.

Later I receive the following message in my email from Hilde. This is too good not to pass on. She writes:


"Scenario I:

The phone is ringing - voice mail 'Hilde, this is Ellen. I fell. I am under the bird feeder. I don't think anything is broken, but I can't get up. Could you come over?'
Hilde is on her roof; HER phone is on the patio where she left it before climbing on the roof to clean the gutters - when the ladder slid away. But at least she knows Ellen can call 911.

Scenario II:

As above, but now Hilde tries to climb down in panic at her friend's accident; now she is hanging by both hands from the gutter, undecided whether to let go and drop the last 3 feet to the ground...when the phone stops ....and Hilde drops...too far away from HER phone to call 911. But she can pull herself close enough to a rake. She rakes the phone to herself just before she passes out.

Scenario III: As in scenario I, but

Hilde has her phone in her pocket. She stops cleaning the gutter, pulls out the ringing phone and answers it. Ellen hears a THUD and a scream and then it's quiet. Ellen dials 911 and tells them to send two ambulances, one to her house and one to Hilde's, and 911 thinks this is a crank call and hangs up. TWO old woman, one under a bird feeder and one falling from a roof? COME ON! Three days later the newspapers have great stories.

Scenario IV:

They find Ellen after several days lying under her birdfeeder. Many surgeries later she is urged to start walking the hallway in the hospital to get the juices flowing. She is annoyed that her best friend Hilde never even called or inquired after her.
Meanwhile, Hilde has been calling Ellen's house. When she doesn't get an answer that first day, she assumes that Ellen is at one of her many landtrust meetings and proceeds to do what she always does in the fall: cleans the gutters, blows the leaves off the roof, etc... but, stepping backward on the roof, there is just one of those little sticks that rolls...sending Hilde flying...head-over-heels and down to the patio...where a few days later the cat-father next door finds her when he is looking for his cat which sat right next to Hilde and didn't come home.
So, many surgeries later the doctors tell Hilde to go and try walking a bit in the hospital hallway to get the juices moving in her body...and as she does...at the end of the hall ---
yep, you guessed it...she has an apparition of a bandaged, crooked figure that in spite of all the lacerations and casts, bandages and blood-supply-attachments hanging from one of those surgical trees, looks an awful lot like her best friend Ellen.
No, they don't throw their arms high into the air as they used to do when meeting at the bridge...neither can move both arms...but they grin...and not even that from ear to ear...each has too many bandages over one side her head...but it makes the rest of their stay in the hospital a hell of a lot less miserable."


With a best friend like Hilde, who needs A Man Who Pays Attention To Me?

Bruised, but still
Stirring the Pot