HE GETS KNOCKED DOWN, BUT HE GETS UP AGAIN

**Written and verbal consent has been grated by this patient to share his story.**

If you’ve been following along on this most recent trip to India, you’ve met him already, but his name and story were not revealed. He was the man who fell victim to the imaginary magic wand that I seemed to have stashed in my back pocket. Although my prior post may have painted an alternate picture, the reality is that this man is incredibly determined and hard working.

THE PEOPLE AT CHANDIGRAH SPINAL REHAB

I’d like to introduce you to my friends. I’m sitting here at the Seattle airport waiting for the last flight of my trip I can’t stop flipping through the photos of the friends I left in Chandigarh. The photos are likely just faces to many of you, but to me each face has a score of memories logged away in my mind. I look forward to the day where I can log more memories. Like a few of the others, this post will likely be more photos with captions.

SMILE BECAUSE IT HAPPENED

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” -A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)

Sometime in the early part of my second week someone leaked the news. There was to be a party Friday night. This was somewhat of a surprise party, but not a well kept one. The party was not in my honor; however, it functioned in part as a farewell party for me.

THE SILENT GARDEN

I am going to take a cue from the name of this garden and not say too much about it. This is largely because I really don’t know too much about it other than it flanks Sukhna Lake and is home to a giant Buddha statue surrounded by places to sit and reflect and be silent. Enjoy!

NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES

“A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” – Christopher Reeve

I wasn’t one of those kids that was really into collecting action figures or listening to stories like The Avengers. To be honest, I still don’t really know which heroic character belongs to which comic brand and who is a bad guy vs. good guy, or who has saved what universe. I do know that a cape or a fancy suit often earmarks any given character as a hero.

THESE MAGIC MOMENTS

It is probable that any American with a childhood spanning the 90's is likely to envision Michael “Squints” Palledorous locking lips with pool hottie Wendy Peffercorn when they hear the first line of Ben E. King and the Drifters “This Magic Moment” start to play. This scene of the American classic film, The Sandlot, begins with Squints declaring that he “just can’t take this no more!” followed promptly by his death-defying act of bravery, jumping into the deep end when he can’t swim. He does this all to get the chance to come lip-to-lip with his summer crush and local lifeguard, Wendy Peffercorn, as she attempts to resuscitate his life. For one brief moment, one “magic moment,” he gets his wish before he and the sandlot boys are banished from the pool for the rest of the summer because of his fearless stunt.

DIP AND DUMP

For any who may have visited me in Spokane between July 2016 and November 2018 you likely would have seen, or experienced first-hand, the most notable and extraordinary element of my old manor apartment: a 9-spigot shower. Yes, ladies and gents… no less than nine water sources adorned that stone tile-clad shower. Count ‘em: two overhead faucets, one hand-held faucet, and six wall jets. It was beyond extra. As the first tenants after a new remodel, my roommate and I were the first to use that glorious, bright, clean, spacious shower; and the first to lose our minds over which valve on the wall controlled which water source. You could drown in a hot second with the deluge of water that shower could supply; a “human car wash” as someone once put it. I moved from that apartment in late Autumn of 2018 to a very lovely little craftsman style home nearby. The shower is adequate, but by comparison it is very pedestrian, nothing anyone would point out on a tour of the home, unlike the shower I moved from.