I’m a bit rattled. So I’m not sure whether there were three policemen and two ambulance drivers, or two policemen and three ambulance drivers. Whatever the balance, I was mighty glad to see each and every one of them.

This column gives me an opportunity to say so.

A sincere and hearty thanks to each of you and may your tribe increase.

As a child I was skinny and able to do a number of exercises on an acting bar. This led to an erroneous belief that I was a graceful little stinker.

One ballet teacher actually telephoned my mother and offered free dancing lessons if I were allowed to dance the role of the evening star in a public production she was planning.

My father was delighted.

“I always said she was graceful.”

“Sure,” said my mother, the only realist in the family, “that’s why she trips over the seams in the carpets.”

I enjoyed being the evening star and since a good quarter of the audience were relatives, the applause, while not deafening, was adequate.

Friends of my parents, probably out of sympathy for them, took to greeting them with an inquiry as to “the little dancer?”

I don’t think anyone in the family was much impressed bythis insanity, nor much troubled by my lack of grace.

My father, who in his young years did exhibition roller skating, would have liked me not to fall over seams in the rugs, but to the end of his earthly life he wanted me to be an electrical engineer.

My mother, uncharacteristically in this matter, wanted me to be a piano teacher.

She wanted me to be a concert pianist, but as I say, she was a realist. She would have been content with a really good teacher.

I never had the heart to tell either of them that what they had in me was the makings of a superb private detective. Alas! It was not to be.

My mother, with great cruelty, refused to let me take my college money out of the bank and pay the $27 to a current detective magazine that offered a perfectly splendid correspondence course in detection &045; disguises and everything.

In the meantime, I continued to fall over seams in the rugs and everything else for that matter.

Now and then someone noticed it, but mostly they didn’t. At least not until I became a senior, senior citizen.

I have wonderfully helpful friends and I treasure them more than they know.

They removed throw rugs from my floor, helped me move computer and file cabinets downstairs.

I have not one but two walkers.

I believe nursing homes have been mentioned but not more than once. After all, I have some splendid Gaelic ancestors. I want my own roof over my head, my own land under my feet.

Since I live alone I did think it made sense to get one of those buttons to push whenever I encountered a seam in a rug.

It wasn’t a seam that felled me, however. I was on my way to meet Marlene Jensen for lunch and as I carried my walker down the outdoor steps to the car, the walker attacked me. And after all I’ve done for the ingrate.

It has a nice little slip cover in beautiful colors and I’ve ordered a tidy little tray that we may have our meals together in beautiful companionship.

No, I was not the least bit hurt, but my grandfather Cruikshank. was a railroad man, and he never had a child or grandchild that didn’t learn early to be on time.

I was late to lunch and that rotten walker refuses to admit its guilt.

(Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column runs Thursday.)