In my previous post I lied and told you I would make two lists pertaining to the word fall: one of all the times I've fallen in love and one of weird stories I've heard or witnessed of people falling down. Screw the falling in love part. Looking back, at least half of 'em weren't "real love" anyway. Boooorrr-rrring. I really don't want to think about past loves right now anyway. The current one is just fine, thank you very much. Plus, people falling down is way funnier than a laundry list of stale crushes anyway. Above is a picture of the back porch stairs in my old apartment, which I've more than probably taken a spill on before. See, I have a reputation as being a bit of a klutz. Get me near some stairs and watch out!

Oh yeah, and if any of you have any great stories to share about falling down, post them in my comments section.

Catch Me Now I'm Falling

• When my Aunt L was a little girl, she climbed the tree in the backyard of my grandmother's house and fell out and got knocked unconscious. My family used to tell me this story probably to thwart any ideas I had about climbing up onto things. Whenever they said "knocked unconscious" I heard "knocked un-conscience" and for years afterward everytime I fell down or bumped my head on something, I would check to see that I still felt guilty when I thought about doing "bad stuff" like stealing or lying.

• When my brother was a wee baby and I was about 4 years old, he crawled up the staircase at my grandmother's house and tumbled back down and bumped his head. He had a bump on his head the size of a large egg and everyone ran around the house frantically and then out the door to take him to the hospital. I just stood there and watched, amazed about how huge the bump was.

• My good friend K from college got really drunk one night and was gallavanting around campus with her friends. They were all practicing how to jump up in the air and click their heels together in mid-air, a buncha regular Gene Kellys. She jumped up really high and almost got it just right but then crashed back down on her foot and sprained her ankle and had to get a cast.

• I was about 3 or 4 and at the beach with my mom. While she was sunbathing, I was busy building sandcastles in the sand. I got really excited and ran to show my mom something I had done, without looking where I was running. I fell into a hole about 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep that someone had dug right in the middle of the damn beach. I was only about 2 feet tall myself at the time. My mother figured out what happened soon enough and came to rescue me from the hole. The whole time I screamed, "Mommy, I don't want to go to China!"

• My best friend E was climbing a fence in the 6th grade and slipped and fell and got de-virginized by it. I still don't know if this is the complete truth, but I don't think she would lie to me about it.
  

• I was at a cool girl's birthday party in elementary school. The theme of the party was that everyone had to come dressed in pink. I didn't know the girl that well and was only really invited because her mom made her invite every girl in the class. After we opened the presents and had some cake, her mom took all the girls aside and told us a story about how her sister had died at her own birthday party when she was a child. She was playing on a porch with all of her friends and somehow flipped over the side of the porch. All of the other girls at the party were too afraid to say what happened, so they all left the party. The girl's mother found her dead after all of the girls had gone. Is this true or some sort of weird parable about taking care of your friends? Ha, I have no idea.

• My mother was involved with an alcoholic for a few years when I was very young. One night he was particularly drunk and self-hating and proclaimed that he was going to kill himself by jumping off of our 3rd floor front porch. He clenched onto the metal bars that held the porch up and hung there, shouting about how he was going to end it all and how sorry we'd be. The thing is, and I don't think he was aware of this, the drop was definitely not high enough to be fatal. The most damage he could have done is maybe break an arm or a leg. My mother called the police while he hung there. They came and forced him to climb back up onto the porch, and then they took him away for the night.

• Around age 9, my brother and I decided to pretend I was blind. We tied a blindfold over my eyes and my brother led me around the living room like a seeing eye dog. I was having so much fun that I decided to break free from my brother and flop down onto our couch. What I thought was our couch was really a coffee table. I landed on it face first and knocked out my two front teeth. Luckily, they were still my baby teeth and started to grow back soon after.

• I was at a school rollerskating trip in junior high and was good at rollerskating but had a little trouble when it came to stopping. The floor was pretty packed and I was rollerskating behind a mother and father with their toddler between them. I started to pick up a little speed and got dangerously close to the skaters in front of me. I lost control and couldn't slow down enough to stop bumping into them or falling down. To steady myself and prevent falling, I reached out my hand and grabbed the first thing I could that was in front of me, which was the toddler's head.
  

• My other friend J has a friend from high school who was a house painter for awhile. While up on some scaffolding, he slipped and fell and caught his scrotum on something and RIPPED IT OPEN! He had to wear big grown-up diapers for the rest of the summer and had to keep his legs apart at all times.

It doesn't get much worse than that, so I'm going to end it there. Enjoy!