if a mom falls in the forest...

Around here, people fall over a lot. Everyone but me, that is. When the kids fall, you can detemine the severity of the injury by how quickly sound emerges. If you hear thudding and crashing and then nothing, that is because they are very injured, or they think they are very injured and are sucking in a gallon of breath before they scream. And the Man of God, he falls up and down the stairs frequently, because a) there is always stuff on the stairs and b) he doesn't look where he's going, because he's in the 3rd heavens. And I hear the partial stair-run, and the crashings down, and the groan, and because I know I should, I always get up and go find the body. I'm not saying he's dramatic. Y'all just draw your own conclusions.

But it's never me, because I made a decision when I was 9 or 10 that I did not want to fall down anymore, ever again. It wasn't easy, given that I am a total klutz, but I eliminated almost all activities that preclude falling, like riding a bike, roller-skating, running, etc. And I have fallen down very few times in the last 20+ years, due to these precautions.

Today I was bested by a cardboard box. Makes me want to become an environmentalist. My husband ordered a new guitar case on the interwebs, and it came in a large cardboard container. Tangent: why would a "heavy duty flight case" need to come in a cardboard box? Couldn't they just slap a stamp on it and let it go? I mean, cardboard. So the kids, they took the box and the paper and bubble wrap or whatever and spread it across the entire living room, and they shut each other inside it and then screamed at each other because it was dark, and they drove it around like a train, and Tristan brought Tupperware from all his hiding places and closed it up in there, and fun was had by all, until I sent them all screaming into "quiet time".

I was just walking. Walking should be safe. Somehow, my foot clipped the carboard curb and down I went, flattening the box and jarring my arm and neck. I hate falling. That moment when you know you're going over and you're watching the ground rush up and you're thinking, "How bad is it going to hurt?" but it's out of your control, so you just scream like a little weenie and then your skeleton meets the floor. "AAAK!" I screeched, like some kind of extinct dinosaur-bird. And then after a second, "Oh, I fell so HARD."

Richy offered support from the office. "Are you all right?" he inquired politely. I did not answer, because in my opinion, that was not an appropriate response. "Do I need to come in there?" he says, while Toby yells down the stairs, "What happened, Mom? What exactly happened??" "Go BACK to quiet time," I said to Toby, and "I don't KNOW if you should come in here..." to the MOG, who was casually taking a tour of the rest of the house. "Where are you?" he finally asked, like my voice wasn't coming from one spot, and one spot only. "I can't find you." "I'm right here." I answered as meanly as possible, and I hope it hurt. "Do I have to give you a map?" and then he was there, smirking at my distress.

I'm fine, by the way. A little jaded, maybe. When he falls up the stairs tonight, I'm going to act like I didn't hear him. Maybe I'll sing, I don't know.