So much for the fat man's truss walk; I seem to have broken through a fitness plateau in the last few days. I did 5 miles on Saturday, in two stages, with no shortness of breath and little muscle discomfort. For all I know, the breathing trouble I'd had beforehand was a lingering Covid symptom.
Medicine is one of the few subjects I've never been curious about; actually, it's more that I'm averse to learning about diseases and disorders, as if my willful ignorance has stood in front of me all these years as a sort of quantum talisman, keeping all the bad health demons away.
Getting my breath back had some unforeseen consequences, mainly that the hit I took off my vape pen at the halfway turnaround point was unexpectedly huge. From earlier walks, I'd thought that I was building up a tolerance to the stuff. I was wrong.
Instances of Paranoia: Part III
Whewwiee, 2 1/2 miles to go and as high as a loon. I started the return journey off by twisting my ankle, fortunately not as severely as I'd done a couple years back in Las Vegas, when I put myself off my feet for several days.
I could still walk on it; but that ability, I told myself, was a 500,000-year-old temporary survival mechanism designed to get us back to the cave and keeping us out of the belly of an apex predator whenever we twisted or sprained an ankle on the hunt or the gather. How much more was I going to hurt it by walking another 2 1/2 miles?
The alternative was to Ask For Help. I had friends and family not far away who could and would help me in this spot, or I could install Uber or Lyft on my phone and summon a ride like a normal person.
I walked.
One mile in, while I was crashing through the woods by the roadside along a narrow trail flanked by tall grass, on my way to a find a safe spot to pee, I did not worry about a copperhead snake biting me. It was not until I was back out on the well-kempt sidewalks that I started to keep an eye out for one of those danger noodles slithering out of the various neat hedges or flowerbeds to give me a venomous bite out of sheer malice.
I talked myself down from that fear with a little effort. Copperheads are shy snakes and prefer to stay out of peoples' way, not biting unless cornered or stepped on or otherwise messed with.
I passed by a mailbox that had been recently stove in and knocked off its post. "
You did this," said the part of me that loves to mess with the rest of me.
"
Don't you remember, on the outward leg, when you were standing over the mailbox, gawking at it? I've got news for you: right before that, the part of you that does bad **** when you're blackout drunk smashed up this very mailbox, and you forgot all about it because you never remember things like this. Because you're crazy."
I replied, "
You don't remember when I do blackout drunk stuff either. So how is it that you remember this?"
"
We're not drunk; we're high. Blackout rules are different when we're high. In this spot, I'm allowed to act as a sort of emissary between you and Blackout Suited. Look, here comes a cop with his flashers on. Everybody has doorbell cameras nowadays. You're ****ed. Get ready.."
The cop car flew by.
"I wasn't high when I walked past the mailbox the first time, idiot. And what did smash I it up with, my fists? Lord knows it wasn't my feet. I can't kick very high with my current loadout. And I don't see any big sticks around. No implements of destruction."
Boom. Innocent.
Five minutes later...
"
Has it occurred to you that you are now covered in ticks? No? Well, snakes aren't the only things who wait in the high grass. Ticks, my man. You have ticks crawling all over you. Here we are not 80 miles from Old Lyme, CT, home of the first known Lyme disease outbreak."
"There wasn't much high grass. It was practically a trail."
"
Oh and ticks don't hang out at the edges of game trails?"
I had me there. My skin started crawling with anticipatory pestilence. I hoofed it home, stripped off my clothes, threw them in the bathtub, and checked myself. No ticks.
I took a nap and woke up no longer high, and barely able to walk. The ancient survival grace period on my twisted ankle was over, and I was paying the piper. I limped over to the bathroom...
Last edited by suitedjustice; 06-20-2022 at 03:59 PM.