What Befell Me This Fall

I tripped today in a very public way.

I was at UC Riverbed with a flock of high school students who were working on research projects. Sophomores.

So my partner teacher and I are in the library working with the kids. I noticed one student on her cell phone. I go make sure she is on task. She tells me that another student called her to tell her that she and two others were lost.

A big bell tower with a Carillon stands at the center of this campus and the library is very close to it. That's what we told the students yesterday. So I tell the girl to tell them to keep heading towards the bell tower and I will wait there for them.

As I approach the bell tower, I see the three girls. I walk to them. As I do so, I have to walk down the steps at this series of shallow steps (there were only three or four) at the base of the bell tower.

I am looking at the three girls and think that I have already stepped on the last step and am now on solid ground.

These steps, by the way, are kind of wide. That is, each step is probably a yard or so in width. So it takes a couple of strides to cross each one.

So I step out on what I think is level ground and realize too late that I am stepping into air.

I am in mid-air and trying to correct myself--but quickly realize that I either am about to step on my ankle instead of my foot and that I could sprain it or worse,so I decide that I am going to have to take the fall to save my foot, so I collapse and roll. The minute my hand hits the cement, I let my arm collapse and roll onto my shoulder and over onto my back.

Then I get up and the three girls, who think I'm very ancient anyway, run over to me and ask if I'm alright. I tell them that I used to be a stunt man. I try to casually walk back to the library with them, pretending it never happened.

I feel a little bruised up and down my right side: my hand my shoulder, and my hip. But no real damage.