I have to show up at work at 7:00 a.m. And it's a challenge! I leave at about 6:30, sometimes even with my car keys in my hand.

So, I wasn't real surprised when, upon inspecting myself in the full leangth mirror in the ladies room, it seemed to me that my sweater wasn't buttoned up properly - that I had the buttons in the wrong holes causing the whole thing to be off kilter. I rebuttoned it, twice, but it didn't seem to make any difference. The line of buttons on my sweater were no where near lining up to the zipper on my pants giving me a more dishevelled-than-usual appearance.

And that's when I realized.....

there was nothing wrong with my sweater. There was nothing wrong with my pants. The noticable gap between the way things lined up had to do with my back.

Stand up straight I told myself. And I did....but it didn't help. In order to get the lines of my clothing to line up I had to stand with one foot about 2 inches in front of the other and jut my hip out considerably.

Jeepers Flippen Crow! I said out loud when I realized it. I didn't have time to dwell on it much because the squalker and the phone were both going off at once, but every once in awhile the thought would come to me I got a bent frame. If I was a car I'd be totalled!

But, of course, I'm not a car and I'm far from totalled. Every day I can walk a little further, and two days ago I walked up the street to my old elementary school, Burnt Up Heart ( You guessed it - that's not really the name of the school)

I wondered if it was going to upset me to walk around there. After all this is the place where some harm was done to me. It's possible that the reason my "frame is bent" is from an injury done to me there. It's possible that my frame would be bent no matter what. No one really knows for sure....but I do know for sure that you can't change the past.

I used to look at my somewhat harrowing days at Burnt Up Heart as one of the truly Bad Things that happened to me in life. But lately I'm wondering how true that is. Bear with me while I think this out: nobody knows what didn't happen.

What I mean is this: Very few people can make the case that having a nuts teacher throw you into a cinderblock wall when you're five is a GOOD thing. I'm not trying to say that it was. But what I'm starting to think now is that it may not have been the WORST thing that could have happened to me. Sure, if I'd gone to public school, chances are I would not have gotten tossed into a wall - at least not right out in front of people, as if it were normal and to be expected for the grave offense of talking in class. Maybe it's possible that there would have been no complicating factors - the stenosis - to the curvature of my spine (scoliosis) which is congenital. So maybe I wouldn't have to use my cane sometimes now, and maybe I'd have never been on a walker. Maybe I'd have my balance.....or maybe not.

Because maybe my cane and my lousey balance have saved me from other fates. Debilating injuries sustained while playing a sport, for instance. A head injury while rough housing, or doing gymnastics or some other "girl sport". Maybe as bad as Burnt Up Heart was, some more terrible evil would have awaited me had I gone to school some other place.

I wonder why I am thinking such things now?