Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Rain, embarrassment and helpfulness

Yesterday evening I took my wounded arm, and unseen knee, into the local farmacia...My Catalan does not stretch to medical terms very well, so I waved my wound around and made band aid...well gauze pad and tape noises...you know what the lovely lady behind the counter did?

My oh my, I just can't picture this in Shoppers or CVS...."Pobra" she said, which is sort of like, you poor dear. Then she went, put on gloves, got a bunch of gauze and some sterile water, proceeded to wash out my cut, and apply an enormous gauze bandage! She gave me a spare, and wouldn't even accept payment for the bandages!

Only when I asked for a couple more, so that if I did it again I would have some on hand and not have to wait three hours till the farmacia opened, did she bill me...4 euros for a 4.80 Euro purchase.

How nice is THAT!

This is a fascinating aside as well....The other day it rained here. Sounds pretty boring I know. It was a fairly spectacularly black cloud, lots of wind and rain rain rain...turns out after the fact though that it didn't rain water, it rained mud. Everything is FILTHY. I had to wash the clothes line before I hung the clothes out. Look at this black car:



I found out today that this happens some times...that I had noticed, but that the dirt comes from the Sahara! Well, now that's a little more special...this happens to ships out in the Atlantic as well. You would think that it would be pretty tidy out there, but every now and then, gritty masses of grungy rain arrive, coating everything with sand and dirt. I almost feel like saving some!

Know what else is nice? My sister has been making wistful beach noises as we are thinking about our next get together...and I had a smack-the-forehead moment on the beach yesterday, I e-mailed her to re-issue an open invitation to come and visit us...even if only for an afternoon on the beach, extravagant I know, but such are the joys of living not toooooo far apart...well, darling sister LEAPT at the opportunity, and she and her two boys are coming down for the weekend on June 7 - 10!

I am seriously OVER EXCITED!

I LOVE my sis....WHOOOO HOOOOOOOOO!

The other thing that I was wondering about is this. Several of you, thank you very much, e-mailed to relate some of your own dismal and embarrassing stories of falling on your face and scraping yourselves up like a three year old. I do appreciate it enormously, all of you. Here's the funny thing though. Every single one of us was embarrassed. Why? I mean, yeah it's kinda klutzy, but lets face facts, everyone does it sometimes. So why were we all, uniformly, embarrassed?

Is it a left-over from all those rotten high school types who would ridicule you ferociously and near eternally? Or is it like hiccups that go on too long, or in the wrong venue, and we are faced by such an obvious realisation of our animal selves that it is culturally uncomfortable. I wonder if it is universally embarrassing to wipe out like that, or just western culture, that is so divorced from out beings as breathing, bleeding, hiccuping animals? That may take a while to discover. But if any of you have experience outside of the western mindset, and would like to speak to this question, I would be delighted to know more.

4 comments:

Joanne Vive la Fr said...

Honored to be mentioned on the blog!!
Am also MAJORLY OVER EXCITED!!!!!!! and trying to calm it down in order to not be overexcited for the next 3 weeks.
As far as scraped knees/elbows/other body parts goes I didn't write anything because I (as some of you may know) am not Massively coordinated so that happens to me on occassion and YES - I am embarassed sometimes - and you know why? because there are some people who honestly are like the opposite of Pig Pen from Charlie Brown who - at least give the impression - that they could stand in the middle of a PIG PEN and not have a spot of mud land on their pure white head to toe outfits. do i sound bitter? i'm not - i think they are aliens and not normal - and that noone should be THAT concerned with staying clean or else all of their offspring will grow up with horrible allergies. BUT having rambled on - back to my point which was that - when we were in Rome recently - I TWICE wiped out right outside St Peter's cathedral and landed...... on my KNEES (well one at least) - so we were joking that it was some kind of sign that I should renounce my wicked ways and join the catholic church - ha ha - (those who know me know just how likely THAT is) - but maybe we feel embarassed when we wipe out because sometimes it feels just a little bit like someone messing with us...... what do you think?

kate said...

Hmm, western mindset here, but still, I think you may have a point. Maybe what really gets us is the fact that we go through life with the illusion that we are in control, and wiping out like that makes it painfully (!) obvious to you and to everyone else around that you are patently NOT in control.

oreneta said...

JoannePl: Hmmm, falling on our faces as a message from god...an interesting possibility. I however was outside a theater, maybe I have missed my calling and should be performing as Ophelia?

Kate: Pregnancy was another great eye-opener for realising that you are NOT in control, for me anyway.

Angel said...

That car was BLACK?! And it comes from the SAHARA?! How cool is that?