Fall Down Laughing

Today I fell down again. I’m the clumsiest, most off balance person I know! Now I must say it’s the first time I’ve fallen in a long time because being aware that I do this goes a long way to alert me to where I put my feet. You see, this isn’t something that has started happening because of age. I'm sure it's an inherited trait from my mom.

The first time I remember falling clear down was in college. I fell backward in my chair in the cafeteria in front of everyone at lunch. I won’t tell you who was just one table over and was too uncomfortable to come to my aid. But it was my brother. I didn’t really blame him…just too embarrassing to admit you’ve got such a klutzy sister, and I wasn’t hurt.  Within about a month, I fell again, down the steps in front of the school. The student body president and some of his friends witnessed that wreck, and all I could do was lay there and giggle as my ruined nylons sent one run after the other up my legs. Only my pride was hurt both times.

More seriously, I broke my ankle while roller skating with David when he was only four. Again, I lost my balance, thought I was going to crush my little boy, and forced myself backward, landing on my ankle. Tricky, huh?  We sat in the middle of the rink as a river of laughing kids skated around us. They were laughing because I was laughing! And then there was the time I lay on the garage floor several minutes wondering how badly I was hurt, and when Don was supposed to get home. Lessons that time were never to step on newspapers which were supposed to be soaking up spilled oil, and laughing doesn’t solve the problem. I can attribute my hip replacement to two other times of landing at the bottom of a couple of steps, and strangely enough, my reaction is always laughter! Hysteria perhaps?

Today when I fell, it had nothing to do with where my feet were except that I lost my balance reaching into a container on my closet floor, and by the time I had made a complete 180 my feet were tangled and I sat down hard on another box in the closet, scraping my arm as I went down. Laughing insanely, I managed to fall out of my closet and crawl up on to the bed where I stayed until my self control returned.  No harm done except to my self esteem. What kind of a nut falls over and then laughs about it?