Salamander
Fire Walking

You get pushed out of the plane with no warning, and it’s 9.8 m/s² straight down. The lurch in your stomach, the wind in your hair, everything so tiny beneath you growing steadily larger. You are all powerful, looking down on the ant hills below. The sense of weightlessness is almost exhilarating. You didn’t jump; you were pushed. That takes all the burden of guilt and blame off. You are the victim. Sometimes being the victim can be strangely relaxing. There’s no work, no responsibilities. You just fall. It’s easy.

But then it sinks through your unhelmeted head that everything is getting bigger and bigger, and some simple extrapolation suddenly makes it clear that you are the ant, and those “ant hills” are in reality one hell of a brick wall, coming up fast. But hey, no problem. You’ve got a parachute. You grab the cord and yank. And our program pauses for commercial refreshment.

Well, the world may have paused for its commercial, but I’m still falling. Is the chute going to open or not? Damned if I know. It’s always opened before, though. No reason to think it won’t open this time. No point in contemplating that we’re all on our own little individual free falls, and that eventually, for every single last solitary one of us, that chute just isn’t going to open. I’m invincible, after all. If the chute doesn’t open, then I learn to fly.

Douglas Adams: The secret of learning to fly is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Salamander: I’m thinking that would make for one heck of a steep learning curve.”

Douglas Adams: 42.

Salamander: Whatever, dude.

Went grocery shopping today while waiting for the chute to open. I was in the produce aisle, no lie, next to the potatoes and onions, when my cell phone rang. Why do they put the potatoes and onions next to each other in every grocery store? Because they’re roots? Because they both come in bags? Then how come the carrots aren’t there with them? Makes no sense to me.

I didn’t recognize the number of the incoming call on the cell phone, but I picked it up any way. Turns out it was Dr. Fell on the line. For those of you who read this days after the event has occurred, today is Sunday. Here I am, screwing around with the Idahoes, and I get a call from my parachute. He asked if this were a good time to talk. As if I were going to tell my parachute to call back later. I said no, that I was grocery shopping but if he’d wait half a second I’d move myself closer to the wall where I could get better reception.

That’s OK, he says. He’s been in touch with my transplant surgeon, he says. They’ve discussed my case, he says. He wants to review the situation with me, he says. It’s best if he calls back later, he says. Will 8:00 tonight work for me, he asks.

When your parachute makes an appointment to call back later, you don’t quibble times. It’s 6:00 right now, and the ground never looked closer than it does at this moment.