Falls and........

I am one of those people who laugh like crazy when they see someone fall. You know the falls I mean. The ones where a person does more damage trying to stop the fall than if they had just gone with it. I don't like to see people hurt, and I will do whatever I can to help them, all the while laughing hysterically. This is the only reason I watch AFV.

Last night, while watching AFV with my friend Leslie, she decided to tell me about a fall she had recently in Branson, Mo. (Leslie is a wonderful,sweet friend who is a large woman,and who insists on wearing dainty shoes, especially sandals.) She said she was walking on an even paved surface when she stumbled over her own feet (read, silly sandals). This fall was one of the running two or three steps to try to save yourself from falling variety, which only makes you look sillier and you fall anyway. Let me add here that Leslie has a wonderful discriptive way of telling her experiences, so by the time she told me about sitting in her car surveying the damage, I was choking with laughter. I could just see her dance-running across the parking lot. I tried to be sympathetic as she described her injuries, skinned knees, skinned elbow, and a skinned nose. The nose is what did it. I lost it. She then told me that she still wonders why she puts up with me as a friend.Thing is,she does the same to me. I once almost stepped on a snake and she still tells people how high I jumped.

My mother went through abou three years of falling. She fell in downtown Moss Point, Ms once, during the worst of the 'shipyard' traffic. (Shift change, in other words.) We were walking to a taxi stand to order a taxi to take one of my brother's to work. She saw a cute little puppy and just as she pointed to it and said,'Oh look at that puppy.' She stepped off the sidewalk and went down. I helped her up, but I could not help laughing. She then said something that just hearing it now makes me laugh...'You would laugh if I killed myself'...Another time, she was rocking one of my neices when the rocker just kept going backwards. There she was, laying on her back, holding my neice, looking like she was still sitting up. Same position. I managed to hold my laughter and went to help her up. I looked at Wayne just as Mama said it...I nearly peed myself that time. Another time, we lived across the street from a laundromat. I was working nights and when I woke up, I heard her in the kitchen. I went in and there she was, standing by the sink with the whole of the rear of her pants wet and muddy. I never did find out why she would rather try to jump the ditch instead of going down the driveway. It was not any closer. Anyway, I walked into the kitchen, she was standing there looking out the window, drinking water. I did not make a sound. Then, she said it. I was always able to not laugh, well, at least not until I was away from her, unless she said it.

I have fallen. And, I laugh just as hard when it is me. Once, when I was about seven months pregnant with my youngest son, I was walking in the mall with Michael (youngest daughter). She grabbed my arm to show me something and down I went. She was afraid that I was hurt, so she did not laugh, at first. Then, the both of us were laughing so hard, I was almost unable to get up.

So, if you fall in front of me, and I laugh, please understand that it is the falling, the rediculous way you look trying not to fall, that is so funny. And, know too that I will help you as much as I can while I am laughing.