falling down

I was walking south of Market yesterday, and a man coming toward me caught his loafer on the curb and fell at my feet. He dropped his newspaper. I picked it up, and asked him if he was okay. "Yeah," he grumbled, more embarassed than hurt. I handed him his paper and kept on.

My friend L confided in me: she falls down all the time. "I don't know what it is," she said. "I just trip and fall." Last time, it was in traffic. But so far, she's escaped serious injury.

My friend P empathized. She once got on the MUNI bus wearing a pair of new sneakers. 'Wow,' she thought to herself, 'this is really slick.' The bus pulled away and her feet flew out from underneath her. "The only person who really said anything was this homeless guy," she told me. "He said 'Whoa'."

"What I learned is that the best thing to do when something like that happens is just get up as quickly as possible and take a seat," P said in her matter-of-fact way. Which was exactly what she did.

I don't have anything especially remarkable to say about falling down, except that everyone does seem to do it at some point. Me, I've been testing gravity lately by dropping things. Yesterday, when my workplace bought lunch for everyone, I dropped my plate. (Empty, happily.) Today, at an early morning coffee engagement with that Autodesk editor (the job is still open), I dropped my handkerchief. In all cases, gravity is working just fine.

I'm at work, listening to the U2 CD my sister D got me for Christmas and wearing my new Christmas sweater. And thinking how nice it was to have people around who care about me. I miss that. On the flip side, I'm seeing friends tonight, ringing in the New Year, and enjoying that the rain has stopped, for now, in SF. Yesterday, it hailed. Freakish. I still have high hopes for 2005.