Citizenship!

I went swimming at my gym the other night. Well, actually, not swimming exactly, but just relaxing in the pool, paddling very slowly up and down the slow lane while sitting atop a couple of kickboards and Styrofoam noodles. (It feels really nice; I recommend it.)
 
The THC tincture I’d imbibed four or five hours earlier was just starting to come on in a pronounced way. (I don’t know why edibles always take such a long time to really hit me.) My body felt glorious, my mind expansive. If I closed my eyes, took a breath, and opened my eyes again, I saw little patterns of color in the air. Fun stuff. So I breathed deeply and moved with contemplative leisure through the beneficent salt-purified water.
 
I’m not sure how they keep their pool naturally antiseptic without chlorine, but they do. It’s a salt water pool and I gather that a form of something like chlorine – maybe sodium chloride but don’t take my word for it because I’m not sure – forms naturally from the salt, and has the same health protective benefits as chemically concentrated synthetic chlorine. The manager at the gym once tried really hard to explain the process to me, going so far as to guide me on a spontaneous tour of the little rooms off to the side of the swimming pool, where the machines live that monitor and discharge the salt into the pool’s water. 
 
I always hear the hum of those machines while I’m in or around the pool. Even before I knew what that humming sound was, I intuitively trusted it in some womb-like swimming pool way. Technology keeping the lights on and the pool heated and salinized. Good, strong, industrial technology sustaining my safety and comfort … those powerful smooth humming sounds evoke how I used to feel about machines in my childhood, when I was young enough to trust nearly everything. 
 
I’ve been going to this gym for years and I’m on very familiar, first-name terms with the manager, who is a lovely, friendly, sunnily disposed, vigorous man in his mid-70s. We’ve had many little conversations about, among other things, the wonders of getting regular exercise. So there was already some history between us, so to speak, when he took me on that mini-tour of the salinization machines.
 
So there I was in the water the other night, and it came time for the pool area to close. I never wait to be told it’s time. I’m aware of the clock on the wall. As always, after exiting the pool, I walked my kickboards and noodles to the big barrels by the side of the pool where they are kept when not in use. Just as I got to the noodle barrel I lost my footing all of a sudden on the wet concrete floor.
 
I almost fell backward hard on my head but I instinctively grabbed the wall with an open palm and found a smidgeon of purchase and balance, just in time. This all happened in about a second or less.
 
I realized right away that I could have hurt myself pretty badly. Although, perhaps, had I fallen, I could have turned quickly in such a way as to land on my shoulder and avoid smacking my head hard on the floor. Something would have gotten hurt that way too – perhaps more than one body part – but at least I might have spared my brain. I might have messed up my back badly though if I’d had to twist quickly … and then absorbed the impact. OUCH!
 
But anyway, I was fine, just fine. I had managed to right myself, barely. By the time I even had a moment to consider how badly I could have been hurt, the danger was gone.
 
I noted that there was a nice thick black non-slippery rubber mat by the noodle barrel – but about two feet away from it at that moment. And it was in that little two-foot “window” of exposed wet concrete that I had lost my footing. (And the mat itself only covered a couple of feet of concrete; so it would not have protected my head.) 
 
Now, as I mentioned above, I was high. So I was definitely at my klutziest, or at least klutzier than usual. In fact, had I fallen, I think I would have likely deemed it my own fault. 
 
Therefore, my first impulse was to forget about it. I’m just a big klutz, especially when stoned, and it was likely that no one else had even come close to slipping on that spot, or ever would. I figured I need not even mention it to my friend, the manager. I didn’t want to bother him with it. It was nothing.
 
But in the locker room shower a few minutes later (I rinse off both before and after using the pool), it dawned on me that – apart from anything else, apart from the fact that I was stoned and zoney and that I tend to be a little less coordinated than the average person anyway – regardless of all that – I had almost slipped and fallen hard. That had happened. 
 
So what that it was just silly old me – one of a kind, as I like to think of myself? Someone (me) had almost had a pretty bad accident there by my beloved pool at my friendly neighborhood gym. And who’s to say I’m the only old stoner who ever puts away the Styrofoam noodles?
 
What if somebody else slipped and got a concussion and sued the gym, and then the gym had to close down? What a loss that would be to the community! (Not to mention the person who was hurt.)
 
I wondered if I might have blamed the gym had I fallen. Probably not, I decided. I’d have admitted to the insurance people that I’d been stoned at the time (and had had no business driving my car to the gym in the first place). I wouldn’t want to bankrupt my dear gym with some awful settlement. I don’t know how I’d pay my medical bills, but I’d find a way. Integrity! My integrity would save me somehow! But would I still be able to work (that is, to write)? Or would I get unbearable headaches every time I sat at the computer?
 
As this cannabis-fueled thought-tangent dissipated into the shower mist, I realized I still had a small decision to make in the less harrowing reality that I actually inhabited. 
 
Putting myself in the manager’s place, I decided he’d probably prefer to know what had occurred, rather than not know.
 
Dressed and refreshed, I hailed him on my way out the gym, and told him what had just happened. I showed him the spot. I emphasized that I’m clumsier than most people (I didn’t mention that I was high). I told him that my first thought was not to even bother him with the story, but figured he might want to know. He thanked me, and moved the rubber mat closer into place next to the noodle bin, so that the wettest spot on the concrete was covered. (I don’t know exactly why water had accumulated there, but it had.) We proceeded to have a conference there in that spot for maybe a minute, minute-and-a-half, about the placement of the mat, the water on the floor, and one or two other arcane points pertaining to the pool and safety. Our conversation was convivial and sweet. 
 
In the end, I repeated that I’m klutzier than most people and that what had happened was no big deal, but I just thought he’d want to know, and he affirmed that he did indeed want to know, and we thanked each other. He tapped my forearm in a glancing, affectionate gesture, smiled in an earnest and kind way, and said, “It’s good to have you back!” (I hadn’t been there for a while.) And I said honestly, “It’s good to be back!” And we parted as friends as we always do, perhaps even friendlier friends.