Every year, my folks take me out to shop for clothing as a birthday present. We don’t do this on my birthday, because that would get us into crowded stores and parking lots due to holiday shopping. So we wait a month, until January, when travel won’t be so hectic.
This past weekend my father drove us to the Nanuet Mall (or whatever its new name is) to have lunch before we’d go to a “tall men’s shop” to buy clothes for me. After lunch, my stepmother asked if we could stop by Fairways first to do a bit of food shopping. I’d never been to Fairways before, but a number of friends had recommended it to me so I was willing to take a look.
My father drove us to the front of the store to get out, after which he’d find a parking space. As I got out of the car, the tip of my sneaker hit the edge of the curb. I lost my balance and fell.
It was hard fall, but not a terribly injurious one. I didn’t break any bones or sprain any limbs (though my neck is aching a bit today). However, I scraped the back of both my hands and my right knee.
We were right in front of Fairways, so I went inside and got some band-aids and alcohol wipes. I managed to clean and bandage the wounds as best I could. There way almost no bleeding, just raw exposed lower layers of skin. Since there was nothing else we do, we finished shopping at Fairways and at the clothing store.
In the days since then, all the scrapes became enflamed. It’s mild on my hands, but my knee hurts like the blazes. I took off from work yesterday to spend most of the day holding an ice pack to my knee.
It’s getting better. I can see the size of the inflamed areas and exposed skin shrinking every day. The pain is still there, though.
The point of all this is: Over the next couple of days, if you’re talking to me and you see a pained expression on my face, it may not be because you’re describing your 25th-level half-orc Paladin in your Pathfinder game, or telling me about you see animals in the patterns made by bubbles in your pancakes, or how vaccination and fluoridation and climate change are all government conspiracies. It may be because I am in pain at that moment.
However, I reserve the right to have a pained expression on my face for other reasons as well.