The Lesson I Learned Beneath the Dining Room Table.

Huh?
I'll explain.

I do not consider myself a clumsy person.
I don't know that I would consider myself "graceful" either, I struggle with stilettos, but I'm not usually the one that trips over my own feet when I walk.
However, last night, I managed to pull off the most ungraceful maneuver possible.
I fell down our entire flight of hardwood stairs...and I never saw it coming.

I had just gotten out of the shower and wrapped my wet hair in a towel, turban style.
My feet were cold so I put on a pair of ragged, but warm, fuzzy socks. Later I would discover that the rubber pads on the bottom, placed there to prevent you from pulling off any Tom Cruise (Risky Business anybody??) moves, had worn slap off.
Deciding that I needed a glass of ice water before heading off to bed, I made my way down the stairs.
You see where I'm going with this, don't you?
I had just cleared the first, carpeted, flight of stairs and was rounding the landing when it happened...my foot slipped off of the top stair.

First, I went airborne.
My feet flew out from under me and my arms, instinctively, flung out to the side, hands grasping for anything to prevent the inevitable crash my coccyx (who am I kidding..my BUTT) could sense coming.
It was no use.
My left hand grabbed on to the cast iron piece of death trap artwork displayed on the wall.
My right hand tried to cling on to the banister but to no avail, I managed to grasp nothing but air.
The next thing I know, I'm partially under the dining room table, that sits across the room from the bottom of the hardwood stairs. My, over grown guinea pig of a dog, Ali was ferociously standing over me barking his little head off. I would like to think that he was trying to protect me from the ungraceful alien that had taken over my body, but really, I think he just thought I had lost my mind and he was there to let me know he would eat me alive if I dare move.
Such a sweet dog.
Not two seconds later, Severyn is swatting Ali away from me and looking down on me with fear in his eyes "oh my gosh! Lindsey are you okay!!??" "Get up" "Are you okay? Did you hit your head??"
Part of me wanted to answer "I'm fine, I just thought this would be quicker than actually walking down the stairs"...but another part of me (probably my tailbone) was screaming "Ouucccccch!!!"
Tears sprung to my eyes and I just laid there.
I told Sev not to move me while I wiggled my toes, tried to push up on my arms and twisted my head from side to side. In the end, with the help of Severyn, I climbed to my feet.
My butt hurt, my back hurt, my head hurt and my left arm hurt. My left hand was bleeding from my efforts of trying to cling to the cast iron wall piece.
I was a mess.
Thankfully, I decided later, that the towel I had wrapped around my wet hair, had actually provided a bit of protection from the stairs...as I did manage to hit every one of them with the back of my head on the way down.

Severyn, who had been sitting on the couch and witnessed the entire thing, said all he had time to see was a white blur (I had on a white sweatshirt) come crashing down from top of the stairs, by the time he looked I was already under the table.

After I realized I would be just fine, I started to laugh...I mean, how comical it must have been to bare witness to my stair tumbling act. It brought back memories of the times I would convince my brother to climb into moms laundry basket and then let me push him, head over heels, down the stairs to our basement...."cummmonnnn Chris! Just do it! Let me push you down the stairs, it will be fun, like a roller coaster ride!!"

Today, I'm sore. I hurt. I can hardly sit down.
Daddy always said "payback is painful".
Last night, I learned that lesson while staring up at the bottom of my dining room table.