Slip-a-dip-a-dip

So I fell in the shower today. I am not sure what prompts me to take up my pen again after all these days to recount a tale of embarrassment and pain, but well there it is....I fell in the shower today. It was not funny at the moment...not funny at all, but now that I look back I think it would make a great inspiration for Hollywood comedy producers, the likes of those who made Home Alone parts I, II, III, IIII .....You catch my drift.

What is worth recounting in this tale is not the specifics of what caused me to fall and how I hurt myself. I am fine by the way except for some very flattering, yes flattering, bruises. What is funny though is the actual act of the falling itself. It was no fraction of a second incident where one moment you are upright and exercising your vocal cords in an attempt to produce melody (something you would never dream of doing in public) and the next moment you are addressing a different plane of the planet and getting closely acquainted with the soap scum in the tub and the flooring pattern all at once as your body assumes semi human contours in its failed attempts to remain in control of the situation as gravity took over.

And that's where my story gets interesting. Rather than succumbing to the inevitable, my cerebellum put up quite a fight in that tub. Gravity vs. my two million year old instinct to stand erect. And what a valiant fight! Arms, legs, soap, shampoo and of course the shower curtain to add to the dramatic quality of erratic movement....it was all there. And relativity notwithstanding, this lasted good 15-20 seconds, not a fraction of a second that seemed to last much longer, but more of a 15-20 second struggle that seemed to last the entire morning. I grabbed on to anything that happened to be in the range of my flailing arms (later I found out I was fighting gravity armed with a shower cap in one hand and a loofah in the other...yeah I was taking on 9.8 m/s2 of acceleration with a fluffy soap applicator and a sheet of cellophane). I can't say for certain but what I believe happened was, for those fifteen or so odd seconds, my brain managed to keep the center of gravity of my body at a position that would allow for me to remain upright. It did so by randomly displacing my appendages in in different directions to equal and negate the pull of gravity, much like swinging your arms and walking, only in a far accelerated and unpredictable manner.

The outcome was inevitable, ever since soap had joined forces with gravity, I had no chance, especially for someone who trips and falls quite often on flat dry ground. Yet I think momentarily it was not my body alone that took a fall, my ego had crashed too, my first reaction was not to check for broken bones, but to listen for my roommate and see if she had heard. Being satisfied that my tumble had gone unnoticed, I proceeded to act as if nothing had happened (not that anyone was asking!) and with great caution finished the ill fated bath.

But now that a few hours have passed, I recall the incident and find the sufficient courage to laugh at myself by sharing the story of my very brave struggle to balance my own weight on my own two feet.