A hard save...
Balance and coordination have never been two things that I possess. I’ve fallen down stairs, tripped on sidewalks, missed the occasional step here or there…At first it’s embarrassing – when you trip on a pine cone which brings you down on your hands and knees, you develop a tough skin (and not just from having skinned these areas so many times before). After you fall in public so many times, it’s no longer embarrassing – it’s actually really funny.
My most memorable fall happened when I was in first year of University. I had been avoiding Spanish Class for over a month. You miss one class, that’s ok. But you know what they say…one turns into two and two turns into ten…then you’ve missed so many classes that you are actually scared to go back. Anyway, My friend made me go back to class – it was the review for the final and apparently that was important; I was going to learn an entire semester in one class – yeah right.
The class room was on the third floor – we made it up the first flight of stairs fine, the second flight fine…the third flight is where it got messy…I tripped up three steps…one step is easy to recover from – but three is a hard save. So there I was tripping up the steps in an incedibably crowded stariwell…everyone was staring…there was no graceful way to get out of it, I just had to let it happen and I hoped for the best…
My best included a professor – whom I landed on…which is great, because his crotch is the reason I didn’t break my nose that day…that’s right – I landed face first into this man’s crotch with one hand on his shoulder, the other in his hand….This was not one of my best moments at University – possibly one of the funniest, but not best.
So what do you do to recover…it’s an awkward situation – how you deal with it…for me it went something like this…“I am so sorry”…the man said nothing back – he just stood there…I wanted to fix this situation…I should have walked away, but I didn’t…I decided it was necessary to straighten his tie, dust off his shoulders and gave him a quick pat on the back – I said thanks and told him to have a nice day…He was silent, possibly frozen in shock. I of course had to move on, I had to leave this mess behind – plus I was now late for Spanish.