Crawling Like a Worm in The
Dirt, humbled by a photo copier ©
By Michael Casey
This is one piece from essay/blog postings, I
type fast so excuse any mistakes.
Well this is my 100th post, I had hoped I
could think up something nice or even spectacular. This is what I've come up
with. I'm laughing now as I type. Yesterday 5minutes after I started work I
bent down to fill up the copiers. I filled one, then another, then I did a
third. I then screamed, I had straightened up too fast and had ricked/strained
my back on the right hand side. So these past 27hours have been a lesson in
pain and humility. I felt such a fool at work, the girls I work were both
sympathetic and funny. Somebody came by for some coloured paper , I bent down
to look under our shelf and I was racked with pain, one girl told me to crawl
away out of the way so that she could find it instead. I hobbled away, out of
the way. The rest of day I moved about like an 80 year old, rather like my own
dad. I hoped that on my lunch break while I sat for 30mins in the cathedral my
back would be restored. We stand all day in our print as some of you may
remember me mention. Prayer and rest for 30mins no doubt aided my soul but not
my back. I went back to work and hobbled about for a couple of hours. Then I
decided I really had to go home and rest.
Getting home I got off the
bus and had to walk only 300yards, a crippled Charlie Chaplin kind of walk,
though I look more like Oliver Hardy. I was home 2 hours earlier than normal so
the family were surprised.
I told them I was fired as a
joke. Then I sat down on an old chair and then I could hardly move. Standing up
again was an impossibility. Last Friday
we had a drama with my youngest, this Friday, Friday 13th it was my turn. My
girls all laughed at me, just as I would laugh at them if the tables were
reversed. Night came and knew I could never climb the stairs to bed, but at
least our bathroom was downstairs. So I tumbled onto our sofa and got ready to
spend the night there. Only we have a glass coffee table in front of it and I
was afraid of falling off onto it. So at 1am I staggered up the stairs like a
drunk with locked joints, then I rolled onto my bed, screaming as I did so. I
did sleep, but in the morning I had to slither out like a snake sliding out of
bed on my belly. Some positions were possible and some were not. My wife
laughed till she cried my youngsters did too, as for me, I laughed and cursed
and laughed again. My wife went to see the pharmacy man for advice and a spray
for me. The pharmacist laughed too, he's an old friend. When she got back I was
all sprayed up, the old spray and the newly bought one drenching me and my room
with the stench of a bad back. I slithered in and out of bed, crawling around
as I couldn't stand up straight. As for getting down stairs that would be an
impossibility. My wife went shopping, stopping first to steal my debit card,
laughing she left me in my bed of pain. When she returned she gave me yoghurt
and orange juice. Later I just had to go downstairs, but I couldn't walk. I
slithered off bed like snake, then made it to my hands and knees, then an
inspired idea. I bounced down the stairs one step at a time, on my butt , one
step at a time. Then I crawled across our living room and pulled myself up onto
a chair. I did notice that we needed a new carpet after 20years our carpet does
need replacing. I then rewarded myself by stealing my wife's pork she'd just
made.
Later after some movements
like belly dancer of 120 years old, I managed to straighten up. I do walk as if
I have a full diaper though. I made it too my big chair in front of my
computer. And that’ s how I got to write this 100th post.
The moral of all this? Well I
am a very bad patient. Health is the most important thing in our lives. I
rejoice that my girls have a good sense of humour, even if I am the butt of it
all. Last year when I had food poisoning they had plenty to laugh about then.
And I do laugh at that memory. We are all worms crawling in the dirt. It is
God's love that lifts us up, as does our family life. Sometimes it is only
though pain and adversity that we learn such truths, sometimes we learn mundane
things, but they too have meaning for us, even if its just the fact that we
need a new living room carpet.
600 stories ago, now my back bust again but we do now have a new carpet 8 years on