Apparently oil is slippery

- Or -

Why you should pay more attention to where you're walking than the internal monologue in which you are giving a "friend" a piece of your mind that you know you will never actually give her in person (though that's partially because you're now fairly convinced she wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with it, even though you've got some ideas of where she could store it.)

This morning as I walked from where I park my car to the office, I was stewing about the latest in a long line of thoughtless remarks someone who I used to consider a good friend make this weekend and how I wished I had the gumption to actually explain to her why I go for weeks without calling her just about every time she opens her mouth. The first was when they were considering a move out of state and we were chatting about the possibilities and I mentioned how I would miss her and she responded, "Well, the only people I'll miss are my neighbors." Yeah, me? Not a neighbor. I swallowed the "Ouch" and just assumed that she didn't realize how that came out. The second time she called to ask me for advice on a matter, which, after thought, I provided. She then said she was going to run my advice past her next door neighbor because she's "the only really wise and intelligent woman I know". Again with the ouch, but also with the "Then why the did you ask my advice and not just go straight to her?" irritation that I chomped down on and actually really bit my tongue and had a hard time eating for the next two weeks. Hard on the heels of that came this latest tidbit, wherein she had to cancel our scheduled lunch for the third time for some lame reason I don't really remember and I didn't mind that so much except that she followed it up with how the only reason she wanted to meet me for lunch was so she could tell me that she's pregnant again because now that it took her four months to get pregnant, she totally understands infertility and wanted to commiserate with me because, gosh, it's just so hard.

(Here is where I will caveat for those of you who have never actually experienced infertility - I understand that not getting what you want for four months is hard. I do. Really. But not getting pregnant the first month you decide to go for it? That's not infertility. It's certainly disappointing, I get that, but it does not qualify you to empathize with the seriously infertile.)

Add to this the fact that all she ever does when she's talking to me is complain about the child she already has - how she's into everything (she's nearly 2), and she doesn't have a personality yet and she's no fun and she's got the sniffles and it's such a pain to have to take care of her cause now she has to schedule what she wants to do around naptime and on and on and on until I want to ask why she bothered to have the first one let alone a second.

So, I was walking and mentallly letting her have a piece of my mind (which I've found to be very cathartic in the past to the point that I could forgive her and move on and try to continue to have some kind of friendship with her) and asking her about the fact that she only ever complains so why did she want a second one and imagining that she probably thinks that complaining to me about her kid will help me feel better about not having them cause I'll see that it's not always sunshine and buttercups - she's just the kind of person who would come up with that kind of convoluted logic - and I was explaining to her that you don't try to console an amputee by telling them that your left leg always gives you fits and you have the worst charlie horses and really they're better off not having that left leg to have to deal with, when the world tilted and simultaneously there were sharp pains in my right knee, my left ankle, my right palm and my tongue and little stars were dancing around in the sky, which was now the main object I could see.

I sat for a moment before it occurred to me that sprawling in the middle of one of the primary entrances to a parking lot was, perhaps, not the brightest place to remain in the half-light of dawn. Dragging myself up, I made for a bench that was not far away and was for the first time grateful for bus stops. Peering out at the spot of my demise, I noticed an oil spot. An oil spot which was, apparently, slippery. Who knew?

After a few minutes, when the sharp pains had dulled to throbs, I limped my way onward to my building and examined the damage. You'll be glad to know that I'm fairly sure I'll live, though I haven't skinned my knee this badly since I was a kid. And thinking about that and about how perilously close to tears I was, my mom's voice popped into my head telling me to stop crying or she'd give me something to cry about and I wondered if my little slip might not just be God's version of the same.