The Art of the Fall

I watched shoes walking past me and car wheels zooming by; well, I didn’t want my body to lie here sprawled out on the pavement forever. It was time to collect myself, dust off, and find some way to stand up.

Falls. Falling is something common to the CMT life. “Everyone falls sometimes”--maybe so, but probably not quite so often. “You know,” my father said one day trying to get me to consider braces, “some people go a decade or more without ever falling.” I didn’t believe him. It was simply an idea out of the realm of my experience. I can honestly say that I don’t fall as often as I used to; however when I proudly proclaimed this to my father, he correctly pointed out that I don’t walk nearly as much as I used to either!
I’ve been told to learn to “laugh at myself” when I fall--this seems to be common advice, but I just can’t think of me falling as funny (at least not at the time), or even pretend to. I am guessing the people with the “laugh at yourself” advice never had a problem with falling. Or, it might be easier to laugh at an occasional fall if I didn’t know it was connected to my CMT.

Falls can be very difficult, embarrassing, and they tend to take me by surprise. Now, I trip all the time, but my body has learned to use everything in its power to keep me vertical (this still tends to end up in a lot of twisted ankles). Occasionally, though, there is no hope in staying upright, and I simply have to let nature take its course. It’s times like these that I have learned to turn falling into an art form.

Here’s one of my favourite stories to illustrate:

I was walking down one of the halls at school. It’s almost the end of the day and I’d aced that math quiz. I was feelin’ pretty good about myself--“Yeah, I’m smooth and life is good.” Then, suddenly, my day took a turn. As I was gliding down the halls I felt myself starting to trip and lose my balance (from some unknown reason, since there really wasn‘t anything I was tripping over, except the floor) In that split second I realized that there was no hope in preventing this fall, but I could try to not make a big scene out of it, I could practice the art of the fall and, hopefully, try to keep my self-respect intact. Instead of going face first, I started to fold my legs in, as though I just decided at that particular moment to sit cross-legged in the middle of the hallway. Slowly I drifted down, falling, but artfully so into a perfectly formal cross-legged position. As luck would have it, this occurred directly in front of my locker! To complete the performance I grabbed my backpack and pretended to look for something in it. Performance complete. Self-respect in tact. After several minutes I realized it was time to work on getting up. The art of the stand is as complicated, perhaps even more so, than the art of the fall. I scanned the hallway for something of assistance. Nothing. I peeked around into the classroom next to me--only a couple people were still in there and they were busy talking. I quickly crawled in there when no one was looking (or so I hoped!) and used a chair to pull myself up. Self-respect? Maybe. Feeling smooth and good? Eh, maybe not so much. But hey, everyone falls, but only those of us who fall regularly get the opportunity to turn it into an art.