Slipping

Watching the Packers this afternoon, I flash on my first date in the New Year of 1978, Madison, Wisconsin. Back when I was shy – kind of like now. She opened the door, and my knees went wobbly. This would be the date I’ve hoped for all my life – you always say that to yourself. I’m barely able to babble, my mind beginning to spin, summoning all kinds of ghastly scenarios that only a pessimistic would-be lover might imagine, such as this example I share, a typical case.

I think that if I step on uneven ground, especially with February sidewalk ice the way it is, I may stumble, say to myself, or an imaginary friend with me she can’t see, “I have stumbled,” as if it were something new, novel, as if I’d say, “Eureka, I have discovered stumbling.”

I’ll be embarrassed for being witnessed in my clumsy act. Even if I were alone in the arctic wilderness, where my embarrassment would be private, I’d blush. Even worse, what if I were injured, unable to get up by myself? Horrors if someone – her, for instance — had to help me get on my feet, the worst-case scenario of all.

And always, I know, there’s a kind of disgust, even anger, with myself for having stumbled, because this should never happen to 23-year-old me – although it has happened before, thinking back on it, which I’d forgotten, or which I may have remembered very well, if my memory was still intact, not having sustained a brain injury in falling, as I have known to happen to some people.

This would shoot through my mind in a shorter time than it took you to read about it – I find I am rambling, yes? A brain injury?

But like a young stud with a desire to take her hand – and maybe more as the night slips on – I say, suave as Ricardo Montalbán sliding his palm over rich Corinthian leather, I say something like, “Shall we go now, you and I, and hope that we can keep our feet?” young English-major-speak.

Which you and I catch, but she may not, so I get the odd stare that makes me swallow hard – like I do a lot, even now – figuring from such a start, this won’t be the woman with whom I settle down.