"Not-Me" the Invisible Ghost

There's something really weird about growing older. Although you've always fallen like a feather, the fear of falling as you get older becomes very real, EVEN when you aren't a klutz.

I'm a klutz.

When we moved into this house with ceramic tile floors, I realized the sudden fear of wet slick floors and falling. Ouch. It didn't happen right away. In fact, it didn't happen until we'd been here over a year.

I'd taken my plate to the family room to watch a movie as I enjoyed a dinner of Greek style chicken and pasta. Delicious. Then the phone rang. The phone I'd left sitting on top of the micro-wave, in the kitchen.

My plate was empty so I carried it into the kitchen. No warning.

Not even so much as a shiny floor warned me that the floor was wet. My granddaughter had spilled water and neglected to clean it up, or tell anyone she'd spilled it.

The floor met me mid-way down with a smack. "Oh Shit!" I screamed somewhere between when the floor hit me and I smacked it again, landing on my knee and my formerly broken arm. I heard the snap and groaned in memory of the break.

Moments later I realized my arm didn't hurt. My knee felt like I'd landed on concrete... oh, yeah, I did. Ouch.

As I rolled over to sit up and check for damage, my granddaughter arrived on the scene. In her fully activated princess motion glory, she said, "Gramma, we have a ghost named 'Not-Me' who lives here. He dumped water on the floor. That's what you stepped in. But it was the Ghost named, 'Not-Me' that spilled it, and he's invisible, so you can't punish him."

Her hands rolled about reshaping the air as she talked, describing the new inhabitant of our home in vivid detail, reminding me frequently that his name was 'Not-Me' as she brought him to life. I hadn't thought I'd be able to laugh at anything any time soon, when I landed. But sitting there on the floor listening to her describe the ghost resident named 'Not-Me' was too hilarious not to laugh. Even though it really wasn't yet, funny. I laughed.

Between all the creative motions, she kept offering to help me up, rub my knee (that was bruised beyond the desire for anything to touch it) and get me a drink (I'm certain there was a little something left in the cup on the floor that had created the problem). I declined and eventually made it up on a kitchen chair that my daughter brought to help me get up, because my knee was truly bruised.

So, now we must deal with this new resident, 'Not-Me'. I wonder if we might charge him rent?