The art of the fall

Some of you (you know who you are) have been complaining that you’ve had to keep looking at the same old (you know what you said) blog post for far too long. So by popular (or just insistent) demand, I begin the recap of our summer that was so pathetically un-blogged. Get ready for pictures of lots more crap, including palm trees and doggies.

I begin the night before our trip to Hawaii. It is April 30, and all is right with the world (for now, anyway). Of course I’m happy, albeit busy- it’s 8 o’clock in the evening and I haven’t yet finished my daily workload nor packed a single piece of clothing… but I’m leaving in 12 hours and who cares if only three or four of those are spent sleeping? Not I, say I. I call up Sara and see if she and Cassie want to accompany Caleb and I on a walk. They do. Of course they do! It’s a beautiful evening, and it’s always good to put in one last bid for Caramacs before your buddies leave for Hawaii.

I’ll cut right to the chase. This one little decision- to go for a walk- made more impact on our trip than any other I made all week, all month, nay, all year. Our walks are normally filled with Caleb’s crazy antics- I won’t get into them now, suffice it to say that he has to meet (crotch sniff, chase, or pee on) ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that he sees while we are walking, which usually results in me doing fun little dances around Sara and Cassie and trying my best not to trip them. So far, I’ve protected those two fairly well in our strolls.

As for me, well, safe no more. Coming up our last hill, Caleb saw something in the twilight dash across the path, and that was it. He bolted for it, and since I was unprepared for this little sprint and still holding onto the leash, I bit the dirt.

Or cement.

Or whatever you want to call it.

Now, here’s the deal. Anybody who knows me knows that my person has come into unexpected and violent horizontal contact with many a surface. There is a well-known video of me “acting” like I’m falling down the stairs after witnessing a gruesome scene upstairs. It is no act. There is still a dent in the ceiling from where my head hit it on the way down. You see, my klutziness began at a young age, when I was enrolled in tumbling classes and the best compliment the teacher could come up with was, “well, that girl can really roll.” Apparently, tumbling (read: rolling) I am good at. Remaining upright, not so much. But ask anybody who has seen me fall (down the stairs, off a horse, on the sidewalk, off the stage, over my own two feet)- if there is one thing I can do, it’s tumble. It’s an art, really. The art of the fall. I’ve fallen, I always get up, and I never get hurt.

This is what happens in the brain of someone (read: me) who has well-practiced and perfected the art of the fall:

(fall begins)

“Rats, I’m falling. Soft surface to land on? Awesome, one patch of grass, coming right up.”

(halfway through the fall)

“And tuck… head in, shoulder rounded, momentum good…”

(inches from the ground)

“Prepare rotation with legs- still over my head? Good. And… ROLL!!!”

And what looks like a spectacular fall is really merely a somersault started from ten feet in the air. (I still giggle when I remember my dad’s face as he sprinted across the field after one of these shows to see if I was alive. By the time he got to me I had popped back up, picked the grass out of my teeth, and gotten a 9.7 from the French judge.)

This is what happened that night with Caleb:

(Ascent begins. That’s right, I said “ascent.”)

“Hmm… I’m awfully high up in the air considering I was just walking on the ground.”

(Descent begins.)

“Oh, I see! This I recognize! I’m just falling! Better look for a soft place to land.”

(Eyes dart wildly around)

“Hmm. Nothing but asphalt. This one might hurt.”

(Mid-descent, notice that Caleb is gone, long gone.)

“Oh, dear, I hope he wasn’t going after a big dog that beats him up. I don’t have time to spend at the vet tonight before we leave tomorrow.”

(Asphalt rushes closer.)

“Whoops, better get ready to land. Oh, no, my hands are out to catch me! I better pull my arms in or I will break my wrists!”

(Arms pull back in)

“Wait! If I don’t have my hands out, my knees will hit first, and as fast as I’m going, I’m sure to break a kneecap!”

(Knees slam into asphalt.)

“Damn, that hurt.” (Sorry, mom, I definitely said, “damn.”) “But oh, no, I have to put my arms back out or my face will hit the ground!”

(Arms reach out to brace the rest of the fall.)

“But if I put my arms back out I will break my wrists!”

(Hands and wrists slam into asphalt.)

“Oh, that had to have broken something. Well, at least I didn’t land on my face.”

(Face slams… and skids… on asphalt.)

“Wow, I’ve never landed on my face before. Kind of hope my teeth didn’t break through my lip.”

(Despite majority of body already making contact with the ground, acceleration of fall/skid continues at a rapid rate.)

“Still falling, eh? Hm. Well, I’ll assess blood later. For now, it’s time to roll! Roll, baby, roll!”

(Skid on asphalt continues.)

“Why am I not rolling? Oh, I forgot to tuck! Tuck and roll, tuck and roll!!”

(Inexplicable flip off the asphalt into the loose gravel bordering it ends the fall.)

“I wonder how much time I can spend in the emergency room tonight before I leave tomorrow.”

Spectacular. And the judges give it a perfect 10!!

So, the way this worked out is, Sara (after- bless her- saving Caleb from the jaws of a rabid Scottie dog) came running over to me and asks the laughable but obligatory, “Are you okay?” Now, I have to give her credit here. She didn’t laugh, not once. She is a bigger woman than I. If I had just seen the $100,000 video I probably would tittered just a tad. In fact, I was quite jealous of her because she got to see it! It had to be hilarious… but she kept a straight face. Despite my pleas to just go ahead and laugh.

Anyway, I think- she tells me- that I answered with a comment about still going to Hawaii no matter how many bones were broken… something like that. Priorities. All about priorities.

Sara helped me home and I staggered inside. Andy came through the door and took one look at his muddy, bloody wife, and sighed. He shook his head. He said, “You are your father’s daughter.” I hung my head- it looked like shame, but I was really hiding a smile. Dad would indeed be proud that in spite of all the blood I hadn’t ripped a single stitch of clothing.

The next day on the plane, after staggering through the aisle with my wrist wrapped up, my knee in a brace, and my face, hands, wrists, and knees artfully bandaged with gauze, Andy looked over at me and fully ingested the portrait of his wife. My leg propped up across him on the seat. I was turned sideways and propped up with pillows. I was trying to cross stitch through a swollen eye using only my thumb and pinky (the two unbloodied fingers). He said, “See, this is why we don’t go on walks the day before we go on vacation.”

“Oh, right!” I wanted to say. “As though every time I take a walk I just fall all over myself and fling myself down to the ground and come back with some horrible injury that makes it impossible to enjoy life for the next two weeks!”

But I thought about it. And I decided that, in my case… he’s probably right.