By Margi Washburn
Wednesday was a surreal day. Leaves were falling by the hundreds, the buzzy things most of us call ladybugs were out and about and in our hair, the sun had warmed us up to over 70 degrees and there was a sale on turkeys.
Halloween was over, Thanksgiving is looming and the media is freaking everyone out about bird flu. Hubby decided I should run out and grab turkeys before they caught a bug and made us sick. I’d just healed my aches and pains but went out and got a couple of gigantic turkeys to stick in the freezer.
As I type this my back is making funny twinges. I did something similar when we lived in Tucson. Back then I had a short fuse and the day came when turkeys were on sale for something like 29 cents a pound. I ran into a really big grocery story after work and headed for the meat department. It wasn’t hard to spot the sale.
About half a dozen women were gawking into the freezer where the turkeys were waiting. They all looked the same to me, but the lady shoppers seemed transfixed by the mound of cheap poultry. I lost my patience, or I never had any and I reached through the middle of the crowd, yanked a turkey out and slapped it in the cart. I’m sure I said something too, and I’m glad I don’t remember what it was.
The next day as I got ready for work I noticed I could only lift my left arm so far. Strange, but I got dressed and went on to work.
The range I could work my arm got less and less and the pain worse, so my supervisor took me to the emergency room. The doctor asked me if I’d recently moved anything heavy or lifted something I shouldn’t have. Nothing came to mind, but he gave me pain pills and we went back to work.
Well, I don’t take many meds so these hit me pretty hard. As a customer service representative, all I did was wear a headset and talk to customers. It became obvious that slurring my words wasn’t reflecting well on the company so I was asked to do some filing instead.
I giggled as I filed and before long, co-workers and my supervisor noticed that I wasn’t being serious about following the alphabet. Someone decided I should be given a ride home.
In the back of my mind I kept wondering what it was I did to bring on the pain. As often happens, when we’re not trying so hard to figure something out the answer comes.
I’d lost my temper, yanked the turkey and now it was turning into an expensive lesson.
That happens a lot. We get wrapped up in our jobs, our problems and in other peoples’ business and it ends up costing us. Our health suffers, so do our friendships. Sometimes we lose dear friends because we ignore them or we make promises we can’t keep.
My day had started early and was filled to the brim with running around and trying to accomplish things. Thankfully the memory hadn’t faded from the lesson learned in Tucson. I made it a point to enjoy the moments, the time spent with family, talking with friends and listening to what they were really saying. Don’t fool yourself - people know when you’re paying attention to them and when your mind is on other things.
This is the perfect time of year to slow down and look around. You will hear the opposite advice if you listen to the commercials that urge us to buy, buy, buy and hurry before it’s too late. I’ve done that, so you can learn from me. If you’re not careful, you could end up with a pain that no medicine can touch. You’re much too wise to let that happen, I’m sure of it.
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