November 19, 2025

By Mickey Dunaway

Since my spinal fusion surgery on November 3, 2020, my equilibrium has been shot to hell. I don’t recall that anyone told me that I would still be recovering five years after my surgery. Regaining my balance has been an ongoing process, and I am still not back to normal—whatever normal is for a seventy-eight-year-old. Looking way, way, way back, I have frequently been a person who fell UP stairs, yet somehow managed to play high school basketball and baseball. Those days are long gone, and I am beyond counting how many times and ways I have fallen since 2020’s back surgery. I have fallen inside the house, while walking Boomer, our Brittany (two broken arms, but no casts), within sight of my driveway, and most recently while wading North Carolina trout streams while pursuing my newest hobby.

Recently, I sent out an email with my new phone number. I sent it because my new iPhone conveniently records every person or computer that calls me, which was the reason I got a new number and found another reason not to trust Artificial Intelligence. I figured I might just stop the spam calls from leaving voice mails telling me I had qualified for a $50,000 government loan. Dozens a day. 

To understand the number one reason I don’t trust AI, go back and watch Battlestar Galactica (the 2003-04 remake). I still have nightmares about who is and isn’t a Cylon. I think it was a successful adult sci-fi series because the monsters actually looked and behaved like us or like the metallic walking robots coming out of MIT labs and Japanese car companies these days. 

Anyway, a dear friend of more than 30 years butt-dialed me while he was putting my new number in his phone’s contact list. I couldn’t get to my phone quickly enough to answer it, and forgot I could answer it on my Apple Watch, so I called him back, Apple’s AI having recorded his number in my contact list! 

So, once I got Larry from Cincinnati back on the line, we wandered into an inevitable organ recital. You know—what do you call it when two people in their 60s, 70s, or 80s have a conversation—you call it an “organ recital!” 

Larry from Cincinnati is a big sports guy. He always told me he never wanted to live anywhere without a professional sports team, and having observed his many moves over the years, he was not lying.

So, we wandered our way to the ills of college sports—especially football. After we solved the gambling, NIL, transfer portal, and playoff problems in college football. Easily, we returned for the final movement of our organ symphony. Larry from Cincinnati easily dropped into the mentor role he used so often to guide me over the years, giving me more good advice that he said his doctor had given him. Larry is my elder by several years, so I figured he had had some aging experiences that I had not yet experienced, and I perked up.

After a recent visit or perhaps a follow-up to a recent surgery, his doctor told him, “Larry, the best medical advice I can give you is this: Don’t fall.”  

At this point, I connected his organ recital to his doctor’s advice. After several minutes, he began the second movement of his recital.   Larry from Cincinnati told me he has had both shoulders rebuilt, and I think both hips replaced, and something else (maybe a knee), but I am not sure.

If you want to live a long life, beware of falling. The guidance that my friend gave me that evening is worthwhile for all of us older folks. However, I am not convinced that this advice is being given by physicians in our area, since the six pickleball courts in our 55+ community are always filled, regardless of the temperature or whether it is day or night. And the city of Cornelius just added more courts, hardly a mile from Bailey’s Glen—our neighborhood.

Clearly, pickleball was invented by orthopedists to enlarge their houses and boats. I admit, I thought it looked like fun, and it was fun when I tried it, right up until I stumbled and scraped both wrists, both knees, and my Apple Watch, which asked me if the medics should be called. No more pickleball for me.

Back to equilibrium issues. I am not sure which deleterious tiny metallic ions from my two knee surgeries, two back surgeries, two wrist surgeries, and a tooth replacement have been emitting those deleterious tiny molecules. Still, I am convinced that they have eventually gathered in the equilibrium and memory center of my brain. That’s my conclusion, at any rate.

As folks get older and they begin to have the kind of mental and physical balance issues such as mine, I have noted that they start making jokes about the inevitable day that lies ahead. After all, it is hard not to think about that day in Bailey’s Glen—when the most common event in our community is the for-sale sign that goes up after another resident leaves our community and this world behind and follows their tiny pets over the “rainbow bridge.” I also wonder why older people own miniature dogs. Boomer, my Brittany, weighs about 40 pounds and comes from champion-bird-dog stock. Sorry, I was wandering, but I do love bird dogs—Labs, Goldens, Brittanys.

To underscore my observations, just the other day I was walking my eleven-year-old Brittany in our community when I passed another walker who, sadly, was dogless. Nonetheless, I said to him, “Nice day to be walking.” 

He replied with a smile, “Nice day to be upright!” That was a new one, and that pretty well says it all. 

A couple of more.

I was sitting in an outer hospital office waiting to be called back for tests, blood tests, and the like, when a pastorally looking black gentleman came in and sat beside me. As we were waiting, he said, “Good morning. Nice day, isn’t it,” and it was. 

I responded with an aphorism I have heard many times: “Yes sir,” I said, “ As my daddy used to say, ‘It is better to have bad breath in the morning than no breath at all.’”

To which my new acquaintance responded in his wonderful pastor’s voice, “Yes, I have always thought that it is better to be seen than viewed!”

I laughed, and when the nurse at the lab door called my name, I responded, “Have a great day.”

And I never saw that gentleman again, but his face and his smile-laced words have made me smile countless times since.  

Here’s hoping you have a blessed day today!

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.” 

George Bernard Shaw