Falling: An Essay

Tragedy, as bad as it seems, is a big part of life. I know, in a way, it’s insensitive to say but there is truth behind it. To some degree, we’ve all been there. Plummeting from one height to another and in transition we vow to change our lives in some way. What’s the word? Falling. Happens to the best of us. The fall of Rome; Fall as a season; falling stars. Heck, even Niagara falls (Ba doom, chee! Thank you, I’ll be here all night). But seriously, isn’t life just a series of downward spirals? I mean, fucken gravity is always on our asses.

A few years back, on the rooftop of one of my 8 floor work buildings a mother duck and her babies nested. After a couple of days that very mother was seen pushing her ducklings off the edge in an attempt to teach them to fly. They fell, for the most part. Imagine the fear that went through their little ducky minds. Cruel as it was, that mother duck motivated her babies the best way she knew how and it worked. The ducklings glided to solid ground without a scratch.

Morning recess of my fourth year of elementary school, a boy named Brian and I were hanging off the side of the white metal twirly slide that stood 2 stories high, centered in our school playground. It was an attempt to stay away from a girl named Candace, who somehow was deemed the carrier of the cooties. She had come speeding down the slide, hugging the side as if she were a bobsled racer. So much so that she bumped into Brian’s hands, which were the essential factor in his balance at the time. Needless to say, Brian fell. He broke his right arm, nose, and was concussed. We never hung off the side of that, or any other slide again.

On an evening drive a couple of weeks back I experienced something I never expected. The traffic lights in front of me were red, my left hand rested on the steering wheel, my right foot pressed on the brakes, and my eyes locked in on this gorgeous girl sitting in the passenger seat. Words spilled out her cute curved lips about everything that I dreamed of hearing a girl say; mustangs and motorbikes, tattoos and traveling, movies and Fat Franks hot dogs that you can only get in the summer streets. I was speechless. I leaned over, interrupting her monologue about heaven itself, shutting her up in the sweetest way I knew how. My lips pressed hers like it would never be used again, not even sex could out do what we had in that moment. Our lungs cheer us on, exhausting themselves and only an intimate stare could express our approval of such a kiss. Suddenly, car horns honked urgently! We break our gaze to find that my truck, our transport, now sits in the middle of the intersection, with cars from all sides honking in disbelief! I screamed! She screamed! We all screamed, not for ice cream, but for a cool exit! However, there was nothing cool about making out in the middle of an intersection and blocking traffic. I put the vehicle in reverse and backed up to where we had started out, before the talking; before the kiss. Then we laughed.

“What happened??” she asked.

“My foot must have eased off the brakes when we were kissing,” I gathered. But it was more than just a lack of muscle strength. In that moment I had truly fallen for her.

There’s falls that cause people to try again, falls that make you walk away, and falls that make you hope you’ll never hit the ground. I’ve seen endless footage of skateboarders falling off the same stair railing 6 or 7 times, trying to land that 360 kick flip just right. My friend’s little girl who has just started walking falls on an hourly bases but she gets right back up. And then there’s falls that just make you smile for a long long time. Life is all about falling my friends. When was the last time you fell?