Rolling Off the Bed

~ Geoff Stamper

Do not fall everyone tells me. The doctor wants to know if I have fallen in the last year. A comment I made on Times and Tides of a Beachwriter has spawned this post. I have fallen every year of my life. Before I reached the age of one, my Mother was shockingly candid on her daily calendar: “Geoff rolled off the bed again today.” Surely we know that no one wants to fall, especially when we are old. We all have natural instincts to avoid falling. My balance was never that good but sure has deteriorated with age. If people exist in the world who do not fall, let us congratulate them rather than disapprove of those who do fall. It takes a long time for messages to get from my head to my feet. The doctor also asks me if I am afraid of falling. Yes, but I am still recklessly getting out of bed and doing things. If I remained in bed, I would probably roll off it again. I fear falling in the same sense that I am afraid of cancer, drunk drivers, and deadly viruses. I can take certain precautions but I am at risk in the world I live in. I will be touching my face with my hands. The doctor inquires whether I have taken any of her anger management recommendations. Yes, I have. I installed a punching bag in the back yard and I post a Blog every day.

21 thoughts on “Rolling Off the Bed”

    1. Yes, I have been answering all the required questions for years. I am not required to write about them but enjoy doing that voluntarily. I cannot remember much of our actual dialogue, though, because I am trying so hard to remember the three words she uses to test memory. I mixed up “sunrise” and “sunset” this year but I was darn close!

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  2. I wrote a paper in college on the Fear of Falling; in some ways it’s worse than actually falling.

    and I think we need to see some more rage in your blog posts if they part of your anger management training… let it out… 🙂

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  3. I am glad I inspired a blog, I could certainly write several blogs about falling when I was a child – we fall a lot at the beginning and the end of our lives – the only difference is that more mature folk often can’t get up again. Perhaps we would get more respect if we replayed our childhood falls; off bikes, roller skates, climbing frames, trees and horses! The clumsier among us can at least claim a medical term, Dispraxia.

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    1. I did have a crib but apparently she would put me on the bed to change a diaper or clothes and then leave to answer a phone or retrieve something. My reward for being a precocious roller was that she either thought I could not do it a second time or that I had learned something from the first fall.

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