falling down

There is nothing quite like the feeling of falling. It is complete helplessness... people have recurring nightmares about falling... because it is a scary thing. Especially when you are not a kid anymore!

I don't like falling. The last significant fall I suffered was a dozen years ago...

I had built these steps from the cul-de-sac in front of our house up to our front door... the house is on a slope, so the front door sat approximately 60 feet above the cul-de-sac. I cut in 49 stairs along the contour of the slope - using railroad ties... and not the sanitized namby-pamby lumber that passes for RR ties today at most home improvement stores! These were collected (by me, with permission) from the side of a railroad... they were the ones which had been discarded when they had been replaced by newer ones...

49 of these 100-lb, creosote-soaked monsters! Cut into the side of the hill leading up to my front door... I am tired just thinking about it!

Anyhow, a couple years after me and Michael Lance built this railroad tie staircase, we had a big ice storm... then it snowed, then it iced again, then it turned reeeeaaaallly cold! (don't get ahead of me)

So the morning after all the ice and snow and cold hit, I stepped out the front door to walk down the 49 railroad tie steps to get to my pickup, which I had parked in the cul-de-sac (because I couldn't drive it to the top of the hill into the garage)...

When my right foot hit the top step, I fell.

I didn't fall right there... I hit the first step, and that's the last thing I remembered until I woke up at the bottom of the cul-de-sac, under the front right tire of my pickup!

Evidently my foot had slipped on that first step... I never really understood the phrase 'head over heels' until that day. That is a very accurate description of my trip down the 49 steps which, by the way, took considerably less time to traverse down than up.

My neighbor Mrs. Nelson was leaning out her door 200 feet away from my eventual stopping place yelling "are you ok? are you alright?"... and I finally opened my eyes and answered...

She had seen the entire scene, and later told me she thought I had hit every one of the 49 railroad ties with my head on the way down.

There were no cell phones (or at least I didn't own one), and I could not climb the steps back up to the house.... so I got in my pickup and drove to work... I called my wife from the office, and she was unaware of the drama and my near-death experience... though she recalled 4 year old Caitlin standing at the front window cackling uncontrollably and screaming (with glee) 'daddy funny! daddy funny!'

I called my brother to tell him, and when he finally stopped laughing, he said "man, if you'd let me get my video camera... would you do that again? We could make $10,000!!!"

Anyhow, I don't know if there is any application here... ok, there's probably a million... but I'm laughing too hard remembering that fall (once the soreness left me - about two weeks later) to think of any...

more later...

God Bless!