Sulfur, Brimstone, and McDonald’s

We’re in Sulfur, Louisiana, for the Calcasieu Short Film Festival, where David’s video Alien Whisperer was screened.

Unfortunately, we didn’t make the screening. This morning, before the festival began, I fell in the McDonald’s restroom. And couldn’t get up. I managed to get myself and my walker to the door and call David, who I knew was waiting outside. Imagine his surprise when he saw me walking on my knees,  maneuvering the walker with my forearms.

A digression: Please don’t say you’re sorry. I’m sorry enough for all of us. But I try to take these events with a light heart and write jolly posts about them. As long as my bones stay put, I won’t complain. Much.

Two firemen kindly got me into the wheelchair–which resides in the trunk of the car for just such an eventuality, and which I’ve made my peace with–and the McDonald’s manager filled out an incident report. Then David rolled me to the car, where I poured water over my hands. At the hotel, I also divested myself of my clothes. Restroom floors are not known for being pristine, and this one left me feeling particularly grubby.

As I told everyone who passed (while I was sitting on the floor) and asked, I’m physically fine. Psychologically bruised–sitting on the floor at a fast food place, especially at my age, will do that to you. One knee does have a bruise, not from the fall, but because my knees are bony, and walking on them always leaves its mark. It also hurts like crazy while in progress.

I fell because my feet were too close together and I overbalanced.  A therapist once told me to walk like John Wayne and to stand like the Colossus of Rhodes, the opposite of what my mother told me to do, so I have trouble remembering to do it. I tried to stay vertical by grabbing the handle of the walker, and the brakes failed.

David said the brakes didn’t fail–he’d fixed a loose one yesterday, and he demonstrated that they’re fine–and said it requires more weight than I placed on it. He said it’s a basic law of physics. It’s like trying to stop with bald tires: the brakes work, but the tires slide.

I told him I should have enough weight to stop anything. And my tires aren’t bald.

Anyway, by the time I finished with the fire department and the incident report, the film was over.

David went into the Brimstone Museum, where the festival was held, and told the director that we’d been held up by his wife’s medical issue. He was kind enough not to say I’d fallen all over the place.

I was disappointed, of course, and felt bad for David. He said he wasn’t disappointed because it’s not his best video and he wasn’t looking forward to seeing it. He also doesn’t like being called up onto the stage to answer questions.

I was also disappointed at not touring the Brimstone Museum. I wanted to see what was on display. The Brimstone Museum in Sulfur, Louisiana, sounds so John Miltonish. David, however, said there wasn’t much on display because they’re remodeling.

Although the trip didn’t meet our expectations, it was less of a disappointment than the time we went to a festival in Houston and learned that the email saying his video had been selected didn’t mean it would be shown. So we went to Galveston.

When I get home, I shall insist my doctor refer me for physical therapy so I can regain strength enough to walk without that brake-challenged walker and to stop falling, or at least to stop having to call the fire department for aid and comfort. When I finished chemo, I was ambulatory, bopping merrily into radiation twice a week so the techs could admire my cute socks, bopping out to the grocery store. During the pandemic, I bopped nowhere. That’s taken a toll.

The whole trip hasn’t been a disappointment, though. In our first real getaway in four years, we drove to Knoxville, then looped back to Sulfur. That was fun. But it’s a story for another post.

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I’ll add that yesterday we checked into a very nice hotel and then learned there would be no hot water for three days. Showers were bracing. Today we moved.

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Image of brimstone cockatoo by Karsten Paulick from Pixabay

Sulfur. (2023, May 16). In Wikipedia.

Image of Colossus at Rhodes via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.