Last laugh
This morning as I was getting ready for work and scrambling around on the upper floor of my house between the bedroom and the bathroom and the office, I started thinking about something that I wrote and it made me laugh. I break myself up sometimes. I think everyone does, although rarely have I heard anyone actually say so. Go on. Admit it. You laugh at your own jokes. Things that you’ve written or said to someone else. You recreate the scene in your head, recite the words to yourself and you laugh. Because it was funny – to you. Frankly, if it were funny enough for you to wander around the house in your underwear talking to yourself and laughing out loud, it would probably be funny to other people as well.
So I was laughing at this one funny sequence that I had posted here in the blog recently. But I was also caught in that totally distracted state where you’re not quite sure what you should be doing or where you should be going, even though you are already “doing and going” without even knowing it. You walk a few steps in one direction and stop. Then you reverse yourself and take a few steps in another direction and stop. Back and forth you go until you realize that the sole reason you are moving at all is to carry on this conversation with yourself, to tell yourself this joke.
It was at this moment of realization that I slipped. I was at the top of the stairs heading down. I slipped in a very awkward way. Sometimes you slip and you know you’re going to land on your butt. Other times, the angle of slipitude clearly indicates you’re going down on your head. This was definitely going to be a Superman without the cape, all the way down the steps fall. Except that I caught myself by grabbing on to the banister.
I was alone. It was one of those close calls that could have been disastrous. I was lucky. My heart was beating hard. You are required to have a deep moment of reflection at times like these. Wow, I thought, I could have died and my last thought would have been a line from my blog. Would that be appropriate? Shouldn’t one’s last thought be about his loved ones? But then it hit me. We may not have the luxury of choice when it comes to last thoughts. Your last thought is your last thought and you don’t get to change it.
I reconsidered my “would be” last thought and broke out in laughter all over again. Imagine falling down some steps to your death thinking, “That’s a fine fish.”
10:30:55 PM  Stories
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