Sometime this summer I tore my achilles tendon, maybe when we moved and I was carrying heavy boxes, or when I was walking on a rocky beach or climbing uneven trails, I turned my ankle. I thought at the time that since it didn't swell that I had dodged a bullet and that all would soon be right again. Almost at the same time or within a week of the ankle event, I reached out and grabbed my dog's collar as she made moves to chase a kitten. This action tore my rotator cuff and sent me into orbit with pain.
I thought my doctor would be useless, pooh poohing by injuries and would send me for x-rays and refer me to a pysiotherapist. Having gone this route before I knew the wait would be agony and the results slow to kick in. I decided that alternative medicine would be the route for me. Quick results and effective treatment.
I made an appointment with a chiropractor for ART and a massage therapist to work out the knots. They quickly diagnosed my injuries and began a series of treatments at the end of which they assured me I would be right as rain.
When I stumbled out the door of the clinic after my first appointment, covered in bruises and nearly blind from the blue heat flame of pain from the active release therapy, I wished I had done my grocery shopping before the appointment. I considered going home and making a voodoo doll resembling the therapist and all her ilk and spending the afternoon sticking pins in her. However we did need gorceries.
I swung into the Safeway parking lot and discovered that it was nearly empty closest to the doors but every stall was jam packed full in the far distance. Oh I thought 'Good I don't have to walk far' The first spots were for handicapped, of course no one was in those. Those stalls are always empty.
I cruised on a little further.
Next to the handicapped stalls were the pregnant shopper's stalls. Cute little baby buggies on peach coloured signs indicating that if you are pregnant you can park here. If you aren't then woe betide you. I wondered how pregnant you would have to be. If you were for instance only 2 months pregnant would the pregnancy police come out and chastise you for parking there because you didn't have the prerequisite belly and do an on the spot test on you?
I kept moving.
Then came the family stalls. Soft green coloured signs with several little stick people of graduating heights indicating that if you practiced family planning you were not welcome to park there. If you had maybe one child that would be counted against you and off to the far reached of parking lot siberia for you. I watched a green mustang pull into one of those stalls and unload a woman driver and two sullen teenagers.
Now, I wondered why don't they paint sign for stalls for those with sore ankles and shoulders but not in need of a wheel chair or a stroller?
Or stalls for people in a real hurry like those with full bladders, or shoppers who are colour blind, or worse yet depressed? What would those signs look like I wondered. What is the universal sign for depression? Grey?
Empty stalls could just be made out by the naked eye on the horizon but I thought as soon as I get there some elderly yet able bodied war vet would claim it before me.
What happened to the days when people could just walk a few extra steps? Since when can little children in strollers not be pushed another 50 feet?
And we wonder why north americans are fat!!
Thursday, September 6, 2007
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