Village Idiot spotted in Greendale

February 10 was my first full day home from the hospital. I was blessed with one of those unusual warm, sunny, and windy day. There was a lot of snow melting causing rivers of drainage.
I've always been a high-energy person, and am used to doing something every minute of the day, but for the first time as long as I can remember I had no plans. My days always went by very fast and I was never bored. On this first day back, I was wondering if it was getting close to dinner time, only to realize that it was only 9:45 in the morning. Now I know what it's like to live in Iowa. I love to do Sodukos so I grabbed a puzzle and went into the nice warm sunroom. This is when I realized that my vision problem was still present. I looked at the puzzle, and the puzzle basically looked back at me. It was hard to describe but basically I could not line anything up. I think it's time for a walk.
I'm going to have to set the stage for this walk. Those of you who know me well know that I dress a little different than most people.( In fact I have gotten fan mail from neon signs. ) I always wear brightly colored Zubaz pants with some type of mismatched tie-dye, or Hawiian shirt. Now add to this, a bald head with about 100 staples from the surgery( thank goodness they removed the bolts from my neck so I wouldn't stand out). And now let's add the vision problem. The best way to describe this is that I had a railroad track in each eye that didn't line up along with the peripheral vision on the left side. So when I'm walking down the street what I see and where they actually are, are not the same. This brings a new meaning to the phrase, walking and chewing gum. If I let my mind wander, I would tend to stray off course. I also needed to turn my head or full body 90° to make sure I didn't run into anything when making a turn or crossing a street. To make this more interesting, I'm also doing physical therapy on my walk by bouncing a tennis ball and trying to catch it using my left hand which only functions at that less than 10%. It makes you look, " a little special".
So at 12:30 in the afternoon, I took off for my little jaunt. I tried to cross at intersections, but every once in a while I had no option. This is where I learned about depth perception. For example, when I turned to look to see if there is traffic coming, I would notice a car approximately 500 feet away and after blinking, the car may have only been 100 feet away. So rule number one, only cross the road when I didn't see any cars. Thank goodness it's not a busy area and only once did it take over 10 minutes for me to cross. My basic plan was to take the scenic route to the Greendale Village Center, or as I call it, "Royville", after the person who bought the downtown area and turned it into a Norman Rockwell type setting. I figured going downtown would be nice since there would be a lot of people down there. Now another factor I have to bring into this walk is what I call the Pee Factor. I've had this checked out several times and they keep telling me everything is normal. I just happened to have a very efficient pump and a small storage tank. So I need to know where all the restrooms are and all the good hiding places so as not to add," The Village Pervert", to my resume. I eventually made it to the village center with only one incident of the walking and chewing gum factor when I received a phone call and after hanging up, found myself partially in the street. Thank goodness, there were no cars. I spent about a half hour at the gazebo, bouncing my tennis ball, and looking for my engraved brick which I eventually found. For the first time ever, I went to the Royville Visitor Center. It was okay, but from a vacation standpoint, there is probably 1,297,862 places that I would pick ahead of time if I were going to go on a trip. I stayed out of the smaller shops, because with my vision I didn't want to buy the whole store just in case I knocked everything over. I can safely say that I literally did not run into any people, however I did run into three parked cars. I probably saw Greendale's Finest(police cars) at least 50 times. Whether this is normal or there was an all points bulletin out for me, it's hard to say. On the way back home, I went through Scout Lake, which was interesting because of the flooding which caused me to deviate my route and end up on the snow-covered paths up on the bluffs. A little slippery going up those hills but I never wiped out. Now this is where unbelievable timing happens. My route took me past Highland View Grade School, just as the buses were coming in and the kids were running out of the school. With my lack of peripheral vision and my impeccable timing, I happen to be right at the place where the buses stopped and the kids were all gathering. Since I didn't want to run into any of the kids and end up being labeled, "The Village Child Molester", I basically stood there in a sea of kids and eventually, slowly moved away from the kids. The kids didn't seem to mind, but I believe every teacher and parent had their eyes glued on me. I eventually made it back to my street. With all the water draining, I decided to play street maintenance guy and use my shovel to open all the clogged sewers. Believe it or not, that was a lot of fun, which is why I guess I did it in the first place. It was now 4:10 PM, so I figured after being home for the first day from the hospital that I didn't want to overdo it. So the Village Idiot made it home without incident or being tazered.