Don't Fall on Me

Today is an REM kind of day.  Not the "Losing My Religion" REM, but the "Driver 8" REM.  I associate REM with fall.  Of leaves falling and stunning colors filing the woods on the sides of the interstate that I used to drive every week to EKU.  This is the music that reminds me of those college days spent sleeping late because of late night drives and Waffle House pit stops.  When going to the library was work and making it to class was even more like the worse job on the planet.   It reminds me of days spent smoking a cigarette out in EKU's quad, sitting with my legs crossed like an Indian, people watching my day away.  I like to refer to this time as the "no responsibilities" era of my life.

Fall of the year is a special time.... back in the day, of course I thought I was swamped with responsibilities, or rather, I was swamped with trying to figure out how to get out of my responsibilities.  I was a terrible student - I missed class so much once that I forgot where the room was when I went to take the final.  I got a C.  I didn't think it was right but I didn't ask questions.

Nonetheless, I did go through phases where I would actually go to class.  And it never ended well.  Mostly due to my clumsiness.  I am horizontally challenged - I trip over my own feet on flat surfaces.  It's a curse - I've always had it.

At first my parents thought it was due to a lazy eye.  I would just run into things and fall down.   After a year of wearing an eye patch and making the Jack Elam eye come into a little more to the center, I still fell down all the time.  I felt out of trees, down stairs, up stairs, out of swings, off monkey bars, off steps, whatever.  I always fell down.  There's really not a lot of help for my particular kind of clumsiness.  Apparently I had a family history of weak ankles.  And, my parents, being eternally optimistic, thought I would grow out of it.  I didn't.  I'm almost 40 years old and I'm still falling down. I have had some doozys!  But the hall of fame, best fall of all time, happened at EKU - in a little class in the science building called Biology the science of life.

The semester of my great fall was a time when I had decided once again to be responsible.  I actually went to this lecture most of the time and attended lab regularly.  I went in to take the final exam, I actually remembered where the class was located, and I even had studied a little.  So, I sat down in my seat along with approximately 200 of my peers.  I sat down and began working through the material.  I have always been a fast test-taker.  I finished and got up to walk down to the lecture pit to hand it my responses.

About half-way down the stairs, I suddenly had a premonition and felt very clearly that I was going to fall.  Then I did.

Now I had fallen down before and embarrassed the hell out of myself - at a friends party in high school I sat down on a stool and broke it into a million pieces, falling into the floor.  Once in an accounting class I went to sleep and fell out of my chair.  I was no stranger to the experience.  Suffice it to say, I knew this one was going to be different.

And it was!  When I say I fell, it wasn't a stumble.  It was a much more theatrical than that.  In fact, I would say it was an EPIC fall.  And to me, it all happened in slow motion.  It probably took less than 10 seconds but during that time I was falling, I was in a state of suspended animation.  I didn't feel any pain or anything really, except something akin to floating.  Once I tripped, I immediately felt my head go over my feet into a somersault.  I proceed to roll in this way down the lecture stairs.  I saw my professor try to catch me.  He missed.  When I finally stopped moving I was slammed up again the wall underneath the chalk board with my head in a garbage can.  I could feel the blood oozing from my busted knees.

My professor ran to me and asked if I were all right.  All I could say was "You can't fail me."  He said, "I won't."  I got a C.   Apparently I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was. 

To the class' credit, no one laughed.  No one even breathed.  Semesters later, however, a student who witnessed the fall for herself met me in another class.  I mentioned falling down in Biology once and she jumped up and pointed at me and said "That was YOU!!!!"  And then she burst out laughing.  In fact, she laughed until she cried and I secretly hoped she wet herself because the more she laughed the redder and hotter I felt my ears become.  Sure sign that I'm embarrassed, my ears get really really red and you could probably grill a cheese sandwich on them.

Of course, as a professor, I use that story all the time as a reason NOT to be afraid of public speaking as nobody can top making that kind of fool of themselves.  I find that most students agree with this logic.  I am getting older now and while I still fall down, I find that it hurts my body a lot more than it used to hurt my pride.  Which reminds me of another great REM song - (Don't) Fall On Me... I just hope I don't fall at all.