Happy Friday. My morning today began like most others. It began with me hitting the snooze button four times, leaving me without enough time to finish blowdrying my hair. On a mission to avoid rush hour traffic, I filled my famished tank with only a $7 snack and made a second thought stop at 7-11 to grab my Doubleshot® and $10 cash back for parking. Rocking out to En Vogue along the 101 South ("Free yoooo miiinnd and the rest will follow!!!!!"), I screamed at a yellow school bus before exiting, parking, and nodding blankly at the parking attendant who greeted me with a thirty second monologue in fluent Spanish. No habla Español...While on the phone with my boyfriend, I trudged up the familiar steps in front of my towering downtown office building. What happened next I'm sure is something everybody has experienced at least once. My foot caught on the top step and I face planted into the concrete to the horror of the business suits and trench coats surrounding me. Not a little trip, the kind of sprawling stumble that leaves you beached on your belly with your things scattered about you in a crescent. A most undignified flop. I took a minute before getting up. I did the cringing "I'm okay" wave as thirty people felt the need to rush to my side and ask if I was hurt. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. But it did hurt. The older I get, the more this type of thing just hurts. To my horror I even teared up a little as the woman next to me babbled on regarding her intense concern. I brushed it off, and hurriedly continued my ascent up the maze of escalators towards security, wanting to die.
A security guard asked, "Hey snoopy, what's your name?" Snoopy? I figured she must really like me or something, I mean I am really friendly as I swipe my key card at the kiosk. I always say "hi!" That made me feel a bit better, you like me, you really like me à la Sally Fields.
Twenty minutes later, two suited security guards entered my office and asked me if I could come with them. My heart froze and my mind scanned its recent history for an infraction I may have committed, but could think of none.
"We just have to ask you a few questions." Ruh-roh. "Ma'am, could you please stand with both feet apart and put your hands behind your back?" I complied and began to feel panicked. "Just kidding! Relax. You don't have to stand like that, hahaha! So, we have footage of the incident this morning and needed to ask you some questions about it." Oh god, footage? Incident? That's a great way of putting it. A permanent record of my grand entrance. I imagined a security guard at 7:15 am staring at his monitor over a steaming cup of caffeine when he sees me prance up the stairs before diving head-first into the cement. "Ahaha! Hey guys! We've got another one! Ooooo-eee that had to hurt. You gotta see this, hold on 'n lemme rewind real quick!" Nice. The security guards proceeded to ask me my name, my height, my eye color, my age, my weight (really? pft, I lied anyways), my address, my phone number. They took record of my outfit. "She's wearing boots. Huh, I would have guessed heels," one said to the other. "Uggs" I corrected. "Were you in a hurry this morning?" I paused for a second. "Tell the truth!!!!" the guard admonished. "Er, yah, sort of." He continued, "would you say you were distracted." "I have no plans on suing you if that's what this is about," I offered. "Yeah, people say that then a year later, you'd be surprised," he replied, "please answer the question, it's procedure." "Not really distracted, no, but I was on the phone." They wrote that down. "Are you in any pain?" "No." "Do you need medical attention?" "No." "Hey, we forgot to write down she's wearing a black shirt. Write that down. Now we're going to have to put all of this in a file for our records. If you need any medical attention or have any questions, here's my business card. Have a great day and - be careful!"
Has the world really become that litigious? I know the answer to that question is "yes," so I get it, I do. But I would have preferred to just forget about the whole thing. Now my moment of embarassment is filed away under "Trips and Falls" in the management's cabinet of potential plaintiffs. Guess I'd better watch my step.
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