I remember a span of, like, a decade where I didn’t fall down. I guess that was my 20s. Even when I was drunk, which was a significant portion of that decade, I don’t think I fell down. Or maybe I don’t remember falling down, but in my book, that is just as good as not falling down*.
Seems like I hit thirty and suddenly I can’t stay off the ground. I am constantly getting wrong on my feet and feeling myself teeter a little bit to a scary angle. And one time a few months ago I fell down while holding my baby! I mean, full on building-implosion-lookin’ falling down while trying to keep my child’s skull away from the ground. I didn’t even trip over anything, really. Just forgot how to walk. Is this because my brain is malfunctioning? Or because I am too big for my bones?
A couple of months ago we were in Memphis at the old house and it was raining out. I just wanted to get from the car to the front door. But somewhere along the way as I jogged along the path, my legs started going in different directions and gravity kicked in and I went to my knees. Er, knee. Just the one. Ray glanced me from the car and told me later that he thought I was Tebowing out there in the rain and didn’t think much of it. Which sort of tells you how insane he thinks I am, but I digress.
And then I did it again today! But let me set this up for you. “This is some Final Destination stuff!” said Rich, the cook at work.
I was walking from my car to work (a lively jaunt down a long parking lot, down some stairs, across 11th, down the sidewalk, and up an ALWAYS WINDY Porter) when the strap on my fancy work-appropriate flip-flop broke in the middle of 11th. I scrambled to untangle my foot from it and retrieve it from the street before anyone fleeing the Gulch for lunch plowed into me. And then, absent the same kind of red-hot embarrassment that might have flooded my veins had this happened at any point in my teens or early-to-mid-twenties, I strolled back across 12th. Lopsided, of course, because I had just one shoe on.
Luckily I had a pair of shoes in my car (a by-product of my supreme laziness when it comes to fully unpacking my car after a roadtrip), so I went back to retrieve them. The pavement was hot on my feet but I kind of secretly love that so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I put on the other shoes — light brown wedge heels if you care or enjoy extraneous information — and hoofed it back across 11th and into the office, sweatstache prickling the whole way.
Fast forward to dinner time, when I made my way down to the cafeteria. It began as a normal trip to the cafeteria, and ended with one step in a slightly greasy area of the floor near the hot bar, at which point my legs — completely unsupported by my cute little patriarchy-approved wedge heels — went in different directions. I couldn’t stop it. It was a force of nature. I Tebowed, and I nearly crushed my face on the corner of the big metal hotbar. My arm flailed ahead of my big dumb body and slowed my momentum, luckily. All this happened, of course, in front of Rich and some other fella I see down there regularly. They were horrified, of course, and were nice enough to wait to laugh until I cracked the first joke.
BUT WHAT IS WITH THE TEBOWING, BODY?!
I mean, I guess it’s better than faceplanting everywhere I go.
* Oh god, how could I possibly forget Tebowing in the liquor store?