When You Scream, Nobody Hears You

It happened again.

I was going to Uncle Ken's to do my laundry. It was raining, but not hard. I put on flip-flops and got moving, figuring I wouldn't take too long anyway.

On my way down the steps from my apartment, I slipped. The bad knee turned, and the next thing I know, I'm sitting on the third-to-last step, screaming and crying, with a badly bruised right thigh, a knee shrieking in pain, a bare foot, and laundry everywhere. (Good thing I put that copy of Rolling Stone in a plastic bag. It cost me almost 8 bucks.)

I live in an apartment in the back of a house, on a dead-end side street in a small town in New Jersey. I kept screaming "No! No! Not again!" and sobbing. Like last year when I fell off my bike, no one heard me. No one ran to help me or to find out what the commotion was. No one offered aid, or asked what was wrong. No one was there. It was just me with one bare foot and a re-twisted knee, sitting amid a pile of (really) dirty socks, underwear, shirts, Acme uniforms, sheets, and pillowcases.

I did finally get to Uncle Ken's. He wasn't angry (he never is), but he did scold me for not telling him when I was going to come. I thought I was coming earlier, but I slept in and then it started pouring. I did get the laundry done; put my knee on ice while it ran, read Rolling Stone, and watched black and white sitcoms on TV Land.

(My favorite of what I saw was an extremely weird I Love Lucy episode with Lucy dreaming she was in Scotland, she and Ricky were in kilts, and Fred and Ethel were a two-headed dragon that was going to eat her. You've never lived until you've seen a Cuban man in a kilt attempting a Scottish accent and two middle-aged comedians in a very fat and very silly dragon costume with "his" and "hers" bibs. Oh, and it was a musical, too. Bizarre but hilarious. The Paris episode, with Lucy getting into trouble after buying counterfeit Francs, was also fun, though more typical of the show.)

I guess I'm still in shock a little. I can't believe this happened again. It's just like last year; I hurt myself, maybe for good, and no one helps me. Where are people when you need them? Uncle Ken was so doped up on his diabetes medication, he spent most of the time I was there zonked out. Everyone else is probably at work, on vacation, or hiding from the rain.

I'll call Rose and Mom after I get off. I had to get online now; normally I wait until around 8PM (I have dial-up and I prefer to wait until I'm less likely to get phone calls), but if I didn't get all this off my chest, I'd go insane.

I'm afraid to call Mom. I'm afraid she'll either get mad at me for doing this again and getting upset (she hates it when I cry) or worry too much. Rose has been sooo flaky lately, although I think part of that has to do with the wedding of one of her best friends a few weeks ago. I wonder if I could get her to come over here, instead of me going there. I think her dogs Toby and Kelsey and cat Bob are adorable, and her boyfriend Craig is a really nice guy, but her house is crazy with two puppies around. I don't think any of us would get much rest. Besides, I still owe her for helping me out last year. Maybe we could finally talk.

I just had Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on. For me, Sgt. Pepper is nostalgia of another kind. When I hear it, I think not of the summer of 1967, but of the spring of 1993. I'd just gotten my first CD Walkman, which I plugged into my stereo and turned into a kind of portable CD player, and Mom bought me two CDs for my birthday. I think they both came from Vibrations, a now-defunct music store in North Cape May, since I'd seen both there - Sgt. Pepper and the 1952 original cast album for the Cole Porter musical Can-Can, best known for the debut of New York stage diva Gwen Verdon. Yes, I still have both. (In fact, I believe the copy of Can-Can I have has since gone out of print and is considered collectable.) I listened to them all summer long. I knew the Beatles in crazy Day-Glo military uniforms long before I knew them in plain gray suits, and I still prefer their later music (from about Revolver onwards) to their earlier stuff.

I just don't understand it. Why did God let this happen to me - once again right before a vacation that means so much? What is it the Gods (all of them) have against me? What am I going to do now? What about cleaning and my yoga and pilates? How will I lose weight if I hurt when I move? How will I even walk down the stairs again without dreading it?