The Fall

The Fall

   Lost Wages.  Sin City.  What Happens Here, Stays Here.  Whatever you want to term Las Vegas, that's what it is.  Glittering, phony, degrading, carefree, overindulgent, excessive, carnal.  Yes to all of those, at least as viewed from touristy eyes gazing down the Strip or staring up at the downtown Fremont Experience.  Not quite the same picture for those living there, the water supplies running suspiciously low, as if matching the wages for those who are tending to the tourists who seem to look just like them, only tossing money away willy-nilly.

    But that was us, my wife and I.  After her nearly 39 years of work, and my nearly 37 years of work, we had a little willy-nilly left in us, a decadent reward of sorts to just escape to Las Vegas for a day and a half.  No dogs, no cats, no phone calls (alas, the cell phone does follow one everywhere), just a few dozen machines appearing to spin reels (the video slots have perfected this illusion of wheels spinning, their microchips randomizing the results with massive algorithms submissive to the whims of the head office on exactly how many wins to allot in a given time frame, each chip synched together like The Borg of Star Trek Enterprise; and if you didn't know it, a "progressive" jackpot win will freeze all participating machines until the winning machine has been opened and the chip has been removed, examined and verified that it hasn't been tampered with).

   So there we were, winning a bit here, losing a bit here, laughing as the 3-D Avatar slots moved and shaked our two seats, its video bonus rounds replaying parts of the movie as if we were now part of James Cameron's directing team.  On one "blossoming flower" slot, I somehow lucked out and filled the entire screen with the same symbol (some of the newer games give you ever more plays as duplicate symbols create re-spins;  in my case, the full screen I landed granted me 60 re-spins, which generated $55, a rather nice return on my 30 cents).  And of course, there was the free picture at Binion's, me posing playfully with their display of a million dollars.  All was going well, looking good.  Until I picked up the picture.

   "Do I really look that old?," I asked my wife.  The photo accelerated me some 20 years forward, a splash of cold reality whacking me in the face.  Now that I had retired, I had to look fate in the eye and recognize that indeed, I looked re-tired.  "It's just a bad photo of you," my wife replied, her half-hearted consolation not quite as reassuring as I had hoped.  Bad photo or not, cameras rarely lie and that was the cold-hearted truth.  I tore up the photo, for surely that was a bad photo...or so I hoped.

   Then back to our room and a night of fitful sleep, our beds (our king bed request wasn't able to be fulfilled) lumpy and soft, contrasting sharply with the futon-style rocks that were termed pillows in this room, their orthopedic shape apparently designed to keep our necks at a wicked 45 degree angle no matter how many we pounded out our frustrations.  Waking up sore and mentally diminished, I felt that a nice wake-up shower was in order, something to turn the day around, to wash off the bad luck and start anew.  Yes, it was a smaller shower, typical for a hotel, and the surface seemed textured, something I wouldn't give a second thought about.  Once in, all was going well.  But as I lifted my leg to wash the bottom of my foot, I began to feel my other (supporting) leg sliding.  It would stop, I felt, as it had thousands of times before when one has to readjust one's footing.  Only this time, it just kept sliding, slowly, but soon, sliding enough to topple my balance a bit toward the rim of the tub.  I corrected by reaching for something stable, but the only thing there was the shower curtain, the slippery shower curtain that simply defied my urge to grab by going ever further away.  And like a tranquilized large animal, I was heading over the rim in disbelief, nothing to grab on to, and nowhere to stop except on the wet floor tiles that awaited me.  And suddenly there I was, my wife staring at me lying on the floor, her look as surprised as I felt.  The photo hadn't lied after all.

   Of course, my first thought was how lucky I had been for I could have slipped ice-skater style, flat out, no warning, down, concussion or cracked skull (my college roommate did this RollerBlading and unfortunately, died from the complications);  I could have been alone;  I could have fallen straight into the shower fixtures and hit my spine (movies have depicted this);  I could have fallen out of the shower, as I did, and hit the toilet rim, twisting my head and neck martial arts style (movies have depicted this as well);  I could have caught my leg, cut my leg, cut my head, broken my arm, got tangled in the shower curtain.  Could have, could have, could have...but didn't.  Instead, rubbing my sore leg and eyebrow (and my stunned ego), I sat there thinking, "that's it?"  I was more than lucky, I was given another chance...

   Old?  Ha, life awaited once again and this was simply a reminder.  In my next posting I'll finish this rumination so you can stop sighing in the background thinking, "Is he ever going to end?"  And what winds up tying this entire newly discovered life experience together (at least for me)?...would you believe, Ebay?