I have fallen in 39 states.
OK, that might be an exaggeration, but probably not by much. I like to claim it’s not that I’m clumsy; maybe I just have bad spacial awareness? In reality, I think we all fall sometimes, but the women on my daddy’s side of the family seem more “predisposed” to falling for some reason.
A couple of years ago, I fell down the stairs in a restaurant in New Orleans…right in front of God and everybody! The result? Nothing. No broken bones. I remember another fall outside a bar in Gainesville, Florida, when I went down for an Alabama/Florida football game some years ago. Again…stairs. These were metal stairs on the outside of the bar. As we were leaving, I was holding the handrail, and that’s probably what kept me from literally dying when I slipped on the stairs. My feet still flew up into the air, but my hand kept me tethered to the rail, and the left side of my legs slammed back down onto those metal stairs. Oh my, the bruising! It was awful! But nothing was broken, and eventually, it was a distant memory. Now that I think about it, stairs seem to be the theme.
Earlier this week, I was reminded of those tumbles when I fell again! This time, I was home. I had gone upstairs to get some papers off the printer. We have been having some work done in our house, so I put a big box across the foot of our stairs to keep the dogs from going upstairs. I was walking down the stairs with my phone in one hand and the papers in the other. I tried to step over the box at the bottom of the stairs, but I guess I didn’t raise my foot high enough. It felt like it was in slow motion…my legs got all tangled up with the box, and I faceplanted into the foyer floor. Bam! In reality, it wasn’t an official “faceplant,” because I kept my face from hitting the floor, but my left elbow also dug into my ribs. After a brief second, I thought, “Is anything broken?” I felt like I had escaped unscathed…until later, when I knew I had done some rib damage with that elbow. It’s painful, and over the past couple of days, it has been difficult to roll over in bed, but I have faith that it will improve.
When I texted my friend, Jennifer, in Ohio, and told her about the fall, she texted back, “Were you hurt?” I replied, “Not badly.” She sent back laughing emojis, and said, “Since you’re not really hurt, I can’t stop laughing! I can see it in my mind!” She had been witness to the New Orleans fall, so it was probably pretty easy for her to conjure up that memory.
I have heard people say, when they are having a string of bad luck, that they are going to stay home to avoid injury. I’m here to tell you, “It doesn’t work that way.” You can still get hurt in the comfort of your own home. I remember my mother stepping over a baby gate and breaking her arm…like really breaking it…she had to have surgery. So yes, injuries can happen in the safety of your own home, for sure. Can an airplane fall onto your house? Well, it’s not likely, but it has happened. It’s probably more likely these days that an airplane part will fall off a particular brand of plane, but I digress.
Here’s the moral of the story: be careful, even at home! Make sure your foot clears that baby gate or box. Take care not to slip in the shower. Don’t walk around in sock feet, unless you’re wearing non-slip socks like the ones you can get at Amazon here. And if you’re going to be accident prone, maybe someone will catch a fall on video, so you can submit it to one of those TV shows and win some money for your fall!
Maybe I need to pull the security footage in our foyer!
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