MY DREADFUL - AND FUNNY - ACCIDENTAL FALL!

I've never pretended to be graceful or to have any sense of balance. That stipulation out of the way, last night's swan dive onto our concrete floor was a highlight, even in my bandaged life. So I ask: Have you ever had one of those awful, slow-motion falls that seems to take forever, even though everything is happening too fast for you to react? Yeah, it was one of those.

I'd been clearing out some boxes that had been sitting around for way too long. It was about midnight, and I was tired, so I should have realized there was danger of a mishap. I stepped over my dog's crate (okay, just the bottom half of a dog crate, since I don't believe in crating dogs) to put a book on our overcrowded bookshelf. When I stepped back, I managed to step right onto one of her tennis balls, and the dance began. As my foot slid down the ball, I lurched forward. Flailing wildly, I managed to grab the edge of our bookcase. Unfortunately, there was already too much momentum, so instead of stopping my fall, the bookcase shook violently and promptly emptied the contents of its top two shelves all over one end of the living room. (I'd never seen a bookcase throw up before!) But I had no time to worry about it, as by then I was sliding the other way.

I scrabbled for a handhold somewhere, and snagged the right side of our huge entertainment system - one of those old, massive beasts. I felt confident this would stop my fall. I was wrong. Instead, I pulled the structure AWAY from the wall, gasped, and pushed as hard as I could. The result was that it slammed back into the wall behind it. Approximately 60 DVDs jumped to safety - and joined the pile of CD cases on the floor.

Momentarily upright, I stepped back to try to escape the vicious dog toys, and instead caught the back of my calf on the edge of the dog crate. I fell backwards (I had to, as I was completely out of furniture to terrorize) and landed on the floor, knocking over two small tables on my way. One table HAD been covered with neatly sorted papers, ready to file. The other held stacks of publications, a cup filled with pens and pencils, and a container of paper clips - at least, before I mowed them down.

The noise of my fall frightened my cats, who tore down the hall and knocked over two bowls of cat food and a bowl of water.

Lying on the floor, paper clips pressing into my flesh, I noticed the papers gently floating down towards me. My first thought was, "Thank God I'm fat!" I'm serious. If I'd been skinny, I probably would have broken my hip. Thanks to my built-in airbags, I was bruised and pulled a muscle, but no broken bones. Ta-da!

I sat up and looked at the damage: 60 CDs plus two dozen books, intermingled with 50+ DVDs, and maybe a dozen pens and pencils, with paper clips sprinkled liberally over everything. It looked like a rhino had done the cha-cha in there.

You'll love this part: My husband, who had been sleeping in the room that shares a wall with the living room (the wall behind the entertainment center) - was a total of seven feet (including the wall) from the scene, yet he never heard ANY of the banging, flailing, or falling. It's a good thing I wasn't seriously injured, as I could have laid there for God only knows how long.

I spent the next two hours picking up debris and replacing it on the shelves. At 2:30 am, my husband shuffled by on his way to the bathroom, stopped, then backed up to check out the mess.

"What's up, babe?" he asked sleepily.

"I'm cleaning out the bookshelves, can't you tell?" I cannot resist sarcasm when physical pain is coupled with a terrible mess.

"Huh. Looks different. Why are you still up?"

"I have to pick up all this stuff that fell down before I go to bed," I answered.

"No you don't," he said. "Why don't you go on to bed and worry about it tomorrow?"

"Why don't I?" I wondered. I noticed him waving as he shuffle-shuffle-shuffled back to bed. Since I had no sensible answer, that's exactly what I did.

Tomorrow I will complain long and loudly about how sore I am, etc. - and pretend I've been skiing. It's about as close as I'll ever get.