In order to fly, you must fall. In order to fall, you must be me.

Falling down in public is pretty special.  And when I say special, I really mean god awful.  You never really do forget it.  I mean the memory of it fades with time and all, but it usually haunts you pretty good for a spell before it leaves, like a faithless friend.  

I firmly believe this species of humiliation is a rite of passage.  We must all fall.  Some of us are prone to fall less gracefully than others.  Some of us are not so lucky.  You're damn right I'm talking about myself.

Since I've moved to New York, I've got a catalogue of falls under my belt.  I just took public fall number four yesterday.  It wasn't pretty.  Let's recap all the falls I've taken in the past four months (one per month!) before we discuss what I endeavor to be the last fall for a while (for the love of CHRIST).

Fall #1:  A cold January day on West Broadway, shortly after New Year's Eve.  I was shopping in Soho before I went into work.  Being that it was so close to the holidays, there were crowds.  Big crowds.  Lots of tourists.  I specifically remember being blasted in the face with ice wind so cold, I felt like my head would explode.  Still, I was wearing what I believed to be a saucy outfit so I was feeling spry, despite the weather.  I trudged on.  In attempts to cross before the cab turning right cut me off, I sped walked through the intersection, oblivious to the ice puddle I was about to step in.  What happened next was a jolt to my physical being.  It was as if the forces of loserdom had entered my body and set up shop, expelling me from any possibility of feeling "cool."  I didn't even see it coming.  I began to slip and slide about for a good 5 seconds, shocked that life could take such an ill turn.  My heart and mind refused to accept it, but I was battling the inevitable.  I was going down.  I flailed my arms wildly (because that's such a good way to deal with stepping in ice) until my legs slid out from under me.  Then I landed straight on my ass.  Most New Yorkers would ignore you and leave you there to die, but as I mentioned earlier I was surrounded by tourists so one particularly kind man extended his hand, pulled me from the muck and ventured a genuinely considerate, "Are you alright?"  With my head down, I muttered "Yes" and scuttled away.  I quickly ducked into the nearest H&M, rested my hands on my knees, hunched over and began to hyperventilate.  Fall #1 done.

Did I hurt myself, you ask?  Yes, I hurt my ego very badly.  Then the pain in my ass set in about 15 minutes later after the shock wore off.

Fall #2:  The historic blizzard of 2010.  There hadn't been a snow fall this bad since 2006.  God bless that.  So glad  I was present to see history in the making.  

I had elected to dog watch in New Jersey.  My friend's mom, Paulina, was going out of town for two weeks and needed someone to watch her dog "Freckles."  Otherwise she was going to put the dog to sleep.  I volunteered, as I was newly unemployed.  And then there's the bit where Paulina let me stay at her house for a month rent free when I first moved to NYC...

Despite the fact that I was "paying it forward" and all that malarkey, I immediately regretted volunteering to take care of Freckles after being there 2 days.  I did not like Freckles.  She stunk.  And worse yet, there was no furniture in the house, as Paulina was planning to move after her return, so she'd gotten rid of most of her belongings.  I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in an empty house.  All I could do was eat and watch television.  It was cool watching all that free cable at first, but then not.  New Jersey blows.  Pretty much. 

I was entering my second week in Jerz and I was getting a bad case of cabin fever.  The people at the local supermarket knew me, as I would go in to buy a cheap bottle of wine almost daily.  I tried drinking and eating the pain away, but to no avail.  Most times I would stay up until 4 or 5am watching movies.  A problem with insomnia ensued.  I was becoming a zombie.  My life was slipping through my fingers.  The only solace I had lay in the trip I would take into NYC that week to meet with a friend.  I couldn't have been more thrilled at any opportunity to get out of Jerz.  I relished the day I would go into the city to have drinks with other humans.  I covetously rubbed my mitts together in anticipation.  Little did I know a blizzard was in the works.  

Per usual, I had difficulty falling asleep and did not achieve doing so until 7am.  At about 1pm I awoke and found a text from a friend saying something about it being a "winter wonderland."  Horrified, I ran to the window and discovered there was about a foot of snow on the ground, and it was continuing to fall steadily.  This was going to fuck my plans pretty good.

Panic set it.  I was trapped!  What would I do?  I could not stay there one more day.  Why was it snowing today?  Precisely now?  I was not prepared for this.  Ironically, I had been lugging around my rain boots like an idiot for the entire previous week because the weather forecast had predicted snow.  It hadn't snowed, so I gave up and left the boots in my apartment in Brooklyn.  And now it was snowing.  

I decided to flee on foot.  I saw a few folks outside.  If they were out, I could be too.  I would walk it.  Even if I was wearing cheap leather boots.  Walking in the snow never killed anyone, right?  WRONG.

In order to get to the bus stop, I had a 30 minute walk ahead of me.  I started my journey and wasn't even 10 feet away from the house when I slipped on the ice and fell right on my tail bone, in the middle of the road.  Square on the coccyx.  The pain was dynamite.  I was almost certain something in my body had been irrevocably damaged the minute I hit the ground.  I sat there gasping for breath, the pain was so stunning.  I also noted the street was empty, so I felt somewhat fortunate in being able to ingest the agony of my fall in privacy.  Except that wasn't true.  After a few minutes, some guy peeks his head out from behind a parked car and goes, "Are you alright?"

"I don't know," I replied.  I really didn't know.  

I told him to leave me alone, sat there for a while longer and finally collected myself from off the ground.  Now some would take this as a sign telling them to GO BACK.  But not me.  I was going to New York even if it fucking killed me.  It almost had.  Even so, this storm would not win, by gum.

I hobbled along, in extreme pain from falling on my asshole, nearly slipping and falling again with every step I took.  My shoes were soaking through, my feet wet, my toes frozen.  The frost bite would set in at any moment.  What was a 30 minute walked turned into an hour long death march.  I remembered Paulina's son Harold lived nearby, so I called him to ask if buses were running and to possibly get sympathies, but more importantly a ride.  Harold answered his phone, much to my surprise.

"Hi Harold.  Listen, do you know if buses are running even though it's snowing?"

"No idea."

"Oh.  Well, I was just wondering.  Because I'm walking to the bus stop now and I already fell on my tail bone in the snow.  I wanted to make sure that there would be buses running before I go any further..."

"That sucks.  I don't know.  Sorry."

Bastard...

Ok.  This was happening.  I was going to walk it alone.  I arrived to the bus stop, feet frozen, ready to face the possibility that no one was coming for me.  Then a bus came.  It wasn't my bus.  I decided God hated me.  

After a good 25 minutes a shuttle finally came.  I was saved!  I had to go and buy yet another pair of fucking galoshes once I got into NYC.  My shoes were destroyed and my feet would not make it otherwise.  $40 down the shitter.  And the galoshes I bought ended up being too tight.  They squeezed my toes together so much, the insides of my toes got cut up by my own toe nail.  Since I wore the galoshes home, there was no returning them.  Yay me.  NYC-2, Cynthia-0.

Fall #3:  My 30th birthday.  I was returning home from a splendid evening of being lavished with attention.  The downward spiral had already begun however, when I waited too long to get off the A train and ricocheted off the closing doors.  I probably looked pretty foolish breaking into a sprint after having gotten caught between the doors.  It was one of those fight or flight situations.  Obviously, I flighted.  Come to think of it, I probably looked doubly stupid waving into the window of the train car at my friend Pat, immediately after having been slammed between it's doors.  As if having a friend in the train makes it ok to act like a second string human being.  And he didn't even see me waving at him.  Run away, old girl.  Just run and don't look back.

I managed to get off the train ok.  I was walking to my apartment, at about 5am.  I knew what I was in for.  It was snowy.  I was wearing heels.  I was tipsy.  Despite all this, I tried to walk as carefully as possible at an elevated speed, seeing that it was pretty late and all.  I had just passed a couple arguing in the street when I slipped and fell on the sidewalk.  I slid on my side, much like a baseball player would slide into home plate.  I looked around.  The couple arguing was so engrossed in their argument they didn't even look at me.  Nothing was broken.  Probably because I was drunk and totally at ease.  I got up and peeled out of there.  This proved to be the least painful fall I've taken, physically and emotionally.  Happy birthday to me :(

Fall #4:  The motherload of falls.  I had just spent a wonderful day at the MOMA, checking out the highly coveted Tim Burton exhibit.  It was great.  I spent a good four hours there perusing.  I even got all gussied up.  Life was going great.  When my feet felt like they were on fire, I knew it was time to call it a day.  As I walked down the stairs to the train, I took my time.  My heels were pretty high and I wasn't sure the train that'd just arrived was mine.  When I got to the bottom of the stairs I realized it was my train.  The doors were still open, so I instinctually began to run.  As soon as I entered the car, everything went all wrong.  I'm not sure if I tripped on the gap or if my heels gave out, but I ate major shit.  I landed square on my knees.  It was very Tom Cruise Risky Business.  Except 100% less cool.  Sucky part was I had a skirt on, in addition to my heels.  And to add insult to injury, the train doors didn't close for another 10-15 seconds after my grand entrance.  I'd made such a thunderous noise when I landed that everyone turned to look at me. So having that agonizing 10 second interval before the doors closed and the train started moving was really key in adding to the humiliation.  But the worst part of all?  Just when you think a human can't fail any more at life, I managed to super cede.  In a desperate attempt to save myself from falling, I grabbed the back pocket of this man's jeans and tried to hoist myself up via his ass.  Thankfully I didn't rip his pants.  But I did get a few sidelong glances brimming with pity and disgust.  The man who I tried to drag down with me asked me if I was alright, to which I replied, "Yah."  He really wanted to say "What the fuck is your problem?" judging by the look on his face.  I tried to laugh it off, but that probably just made me look sad.  I was.  There was NO WAY I could look cool after something like that.  It was the longest two stops of my life.  I still have the bruises to prove it.

The End?