Laying Blame

Ever get to thinking about stupid

useless things? Happens to me

admitted with fair measure of

frequency.

Why just the other day, I was looking

back in life trying to determine where

and how my arthritis got started in

the first place.

Now logically, I would say it was a

cumulative process over time which

eventually caught up to me when I

was in my 60s.

And now today I am paying for all

the heavy lifting it took me to get

here, all the moves from place to

place, mine personally and helping

others with theirs.

Then there were those thousands

of weighty paper cartons I loaded

and unloaded from one place to

another making deliveries for

Kinko’s with whom I was employed

for some nine years.

But one incident comes to mind:

It was 1985 and I was living in

a third-floor apartment in Dog

Town. Recently the building had

been converted from radiator

steam heat to a more efficient

baseboard method.

Several times I had asked the

building owner to please remove

the disconnected radiator from

my apartment. Not only was it

no longer useful, but it was an

unsightly monster which took

up space.

Long story short, one night I

had been drinking quite a bit

and got pissed at the owner’s

failure to remove the friggin’

hunk of junk.

So, I slid the two-hundred pound

iron Behemoth across the floor and

out the back door which led to

the fire escape.

With all my drunken Superman

strength, I hoisted the damn thing

over the railing and let ‘er fly

three stories down to the backyard.

Thud! That son-of-a-bitch must

have made a moon-sized crater

in the soggy Earth below.

Next day, hungover with my aching

muscles and rickety bones, I paid.

And all these years later, given my

sorry-ass arthritic condition, at least

I have my pain and one good god-

damn reason on which to lay the

blame.

                 -30-

Chris Hanch 11-12-2020