Flat-footed

She was a tiny, older woman, perhaps not as old as she appeared, but I wouldn't realize why that might be until after the incident. The top of her head barely rose to the level of my chin, so she was looking up at me from the other side of the info counter. She wasn't pale, but her skin color was somewhat flat.

It all started pleasantly enough. I had just come in, just stepped behind the counter and she was the first person there, with at least four or five people falling into a loose line behind her. She held a few pieces of stapled paper and a small plastic card from a discount program offered by the store.

"Could you tell me how I find out how much money I have in the program that I can use to buy a book?"

"You can do that online. You can go to our website and check on your account any time you wish."

"I don't have access to a computer. Can you check it for me?"

The response and the question are simple, but, I'm still relatively new to the store, and to some of its systems. It's been gently hammered into me that in order to be a member of this discount program, one of the requirements -- REQUIREMENTS -- is an email address. I answered, but I was simultaneously wondering about this dichotomy (small as it may seem to be).

"No, sorry, I can't check it here, because I don't have access to the web from these computers. Any of the cashiers will be happy to do that for you." This is true; they can slide the card and find out a few things about the account, even though they don't have access to the Web either.

She glanced toward the cashier area. This was late last week, and for whatever reason, it seemed like the first dry-run for holiday shoppers, and the lines were very, very long.

"No, no, the lines are too long. Isn't there any other way you can check? I just want to see how much money I have in the account to use to buy a book."

Her face and tone were slightly pleady, and that was okay; she was a little older lady. My obstacle was that, "no, I really can't, I'm sorry. You can use any computer to check your account though...", and my next words would have been about a friend's computer, or a library's or community center, but she cut me off.

"I don't have a computer. I don't use a computer." A slight edge accompanied a slight rise in volume.

Now the email thing came back to the forefront of my thoughts. My tone was inquiring, not reproachful nor disbelieving. "Ma'am, didn't you have to provide an email address to get your card?"

"No, I called a phone number. Can't you just tell me?"

"I know the line is a bit long, but any cashier can..."

"I HAVE CANCER, I'M DYING, AND I DON'T HAVE TIME TO WAIT IN LINE!"

She wasn't yelling, but she was loud, and her voice quivered, because she started to cry.

I am so rarely caught flat-footed, litteraly or figuratively, that when it happens, I spend the next few days going over what happened, how I got into the situation, and what options I had available to escape or handle the situation. I do comprehend, and am adept at, the art of bob and weave. As a kid, I grew up in the era of weekly televised boxing matches (sponsored by Gillette, for those old enough to remember...who can do the theme?). I was slight as a young'un, but my uncle Tommy had been a boxer in Scotland, and while he lived with us after he emmigrated, he taught me the basics, including bob and weave.

Being a slight kid, even with some boxing skills and getting into martial arts long before it was hip, I also learned the importance of reacting to something in a timely fashion, and trained myself to get out of my own way, to let my senses absorb information and let my brain process that information and let my body react to that information, all without any 'conscious' interference from me. As a smaller kid on the south side of Chicago, this meant being able to haul ass whenever necessary and not even attempt to stand your ground, like in eighth grade, when Bob Serritella and I made the innocent mistake of staring at a car too long, and five mosters in leather coats piled out of it and came at us like rabid special teams players.

So I know bob and weave, reacting, avoiding and re-positionsing, yeah, but i know flat-footed, too.

Man, do I know it. I was in the gym, Ft. Bragg, very early seventies. I was done moving weights around, and I was banging the heavy bag. I was a hard-muscled, one-hundred and fifty pound paratrooper; I didn't have an attitude, I was just a guy who was firing on all cylinders (ahh, youth). There were several gyms, but this one had the Olympic-style set-ups, those big plates and bars you see during the Olympic competition, and it was also where the boxing team trained, so it had the ring, the speed bags and the heavy bags. I wasn't on the team, but I wasn't adverse to slapping leather and being slapped every now then in pick-up matches, and there were a lot of guys on base who weren't good enough for the team but still did the work.

A good sized guy, probably in the hundred and seventy pound range, had been doing some footwork and shadow boxing in the ring when I was doing the heavy bag, and I stopped and went over to watch him. We did some small talk, he asked me at what weight I fought, things like that, and then I accepted his invitation to go a few light rounds. I grabbed a pair of gloves (fourteen ounce, more like fingered-pillows) and climbed in. He not only had me by twenty pounds, he was a head taller, with a reach advantage to match. This is all that stuff that doesn't matter to youth, and doesn't escape the eyes, and wisdom, of age and hindsight.

I have a good jab, but at end of my snappy extension, it was short. I got lucky. Oh, not because I landed any sort of lightening bolt of a punch or peppered my opponent with a rat-a-tat-smack-smack-smack of a artistic combination, no, not that. I was lucky because he almost certainly discerned that my skills did not match my confidence, and he was possessed of a boxer's heart, rather than a mauler's dispostition.

But, he was a boxer, and we were fighting, and when he saw the opening -- my right hand was a hair too low -- he whipped around a really pretty left hook, smooth, fast, powerful but not devastating. This next sentence is the truth, so help me Buddah: the punch caught me under the jaw and lifted me into the air, laterally moving me to my left many, many inches, and my feet came back down on the canvas in the same stance that I had left, and I realized I had been spared, even though I had been smacked hard enough to have been lifted into the air and moved through space.

I know flat-footed.

Tears were not coming out of her eyes, but she was trembling. I had been sucker-punched, caught falt-footed, and it was partly my fault, because I had focused on that goofy little thing about the email. I had let it niggle me enough that -- like the pilot and co-pilot of a jet who became so pre-occupied with a burnt-out light bulb on their control panel that they didn't notice they were losing altitude until they flew the jet right into a swamp -- I now had to try and make a recovery in an unrecoverable situation.

In my peripheral vision, I could see the people waiting behind her, but I didn't dare look away from this little woman, now that she had shared what I would have considered an intimate, personal bit of information with me; hi, I've never met you before, I'm dying. I realize that there's no way I could have known she had cancer, or that she was about to tell me and the people all around us. that's now what I'm getting at with the whole being distracted thing. I should have accepted some things as I observed them -- she had the program card; she got it in some way, and she didn't have an email. Should'a gone on from there.

I should have picked up on the rising edge in her voice and eyes, and maybe found a little space at the end of the counter, and invited her over for a quieter, gentler discussion.

I should have taken her card and walked over to the cashiers and found a for-the-moment un-used machine and looked up her account. It would have meant leaving the info area and making some people wait, but that's what we do when someone's looking for a book, we find it in the database and then lead the customer to the shelf in the store.

I could have done those things, and maybe made her burden a bit lighter, if only for a moment. As it was, as I sucked in some air, I think I said something like, "I know the line is long right now, but any other time, just go ahead and walk up to any cashier and they'll be happy to give you your account information."

She said "thank you" and walked away.

Are there rules of etiquette for dying people? Am I even supposed to think of that question, because it seems to me that if I ask that, I'm leaning toward a thought of, 'she didn't have to do that to me', and that sounds like whining. I know about relating to people who are dying. My mom's death was more extended than I was comfortable with, and a few years ago I shot what's known in the the legal industry as "day in the life" footage of a wonderful man dying of prostate cancer; he held nothing back as I videotaped him over the course of several months, and I'm a better person for having known him.

I understand, to the degree that I can, the ever-present cloud of death under which terminal people exist. Sometimes the clouds are brilliant white, sometimes the blackest black. As a buddhist, hell, as a human being, I try to look past the scowls or sad faces or the angry words or the sullen, empty eyes of people and know that something that I can't see, some loss, some abuse, some horror, some lonliness, some affliction, some terror, some darkness, something which isn't about me, is at the root of it all, and my heart and soul are better for knowing that.

I'm trying not to be hurt by that little dying woman, and I'm not, really, and I understand -- maybe if I go through something like she's going through, I'll react the same way. Maybe. Maybe?

I know flat-footed.