The dog wasn’t to blame. The lovely Paris night wasn’t to blame. The charming 7th arrondissement wasn’t to blame.
No. It was my old enemy, gravity, that caused the blameless sidewalk to rise up and smite me. I had thought I was done with gravity.
It had frequently interjected itself into my well-being when I was riding horses. Mercifully, it had held its peace when I was flying single-engine aircraft. However, gravity came back for me, vengefully, I might say, in Paris on Sept.
12. My wife, Linda Gasparello, and I traveled to France for a meeting on aspects of the future of Europe at the lovely Jean Monnet House, just outside Paris. We were guests at the house because a few years ago, we had filmed a television program about another delightful Monnet house: the one on leafy Foxhall Road in Washington, where Monnet lived during World War II.
Monnet, who worked from an office at the Willard Hotel, was a central figure in the American arms supply operation vital to the Allied effort — and some say he shortened the war by at least a year. After the war, Monnet and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman became the two principal fathers of what became the European Union. Back to Paris, where my wife and I were taking a stroll after a snack in the evening.
I have been walking with a cane for several years, so I was not too steady to start. Then came the blameless dog. I leaned over to pet this fine Parisian pooch, and over I went, my head hitting the sidewalk hard.
Blood eve.