It was me versus the chair, and the chair won.

You know how sometimes in books, the author will describe someone, usually a woman, how she walks, how she moves, and he'll say, "She had the natural, easy movements of a dancer, each step deliberate and graceful, each move of her hand, or shrug of her shoulder, flowing, and yet, precise."

Well, he's not writing about me. If he was writing about me he'd say, "With not quite the natural grace God gave a hippo, she rumbled through the room, hands out of control, knees knocking into tables, hips bumping into door jambs. She knocked a coffee mug over on the coffee table. Thankfully it was empty. A floor lamp teetered as she went by and almost fell, but somehow it righted itself. She wasn't even sure what part of her had touched the lamp – had any part of her even touched it?"

"Completely unaware of her extremities, each day started with a forehead knocked into a towel rack or a finger caught in a car door. By lunch, a half a dozen assorted items – scissors, hairbrushes, water bottles -- had been knocked to the ground and retrieved. By evening, several parts of her would be bruised, and often one or more would be bleeding. She  wondered if maybe she had a rare neurological disease that caused her not to know where she was and where she ended, and she worried that she would wake up one morning with the sense that these were not her limbs at all, and she would have to plead with her doctor to remove them.”

So, given that I am aware of my propensity for clumsiness, I was not really surprised when I fell out of my chair again today.   Not such an unusual occurrence actually, as I tend to fall out of my chair every couple of months or so. Actually, it is more correct to say that both the chair and I fell over together -- I didn't just fall out of my chair as one would fall out of a hot-air balloon, nor did I collapse spinelessly out of my chair like a slime mold. We went together, the chair and I. 

It usually starts when I reach too far for something on the ground, maybe a crumpled up ball of paper, or a piece of hard candy that slipped out of my mouth. When surprised, my mouth drops open a little, which is not really a problem, or even noticeable, except when a butterscotch candy falls out. That’s embarrassing, especially when the boss comes by for a chat, which is surprising, which causes my mouth to open and the candy to tumble out.  It would be worse, I suppose, if I had big boobs and everything that fell out of my mouth fall into the huge crack between them. Then I would have to decide whether to leave the candy in the crack until the boss left, or just dig it out in front of her. Either way would not be good. I think if I ever get a boob job, I will stop eating candy.

But today, I was just reaching for a piece of paper that I had tried to throw in the trash can, but of course, like all members of the paper family, it was too ambitious to fall directly into the can, and instead flew over and above and behind the can, as if the can was K2, and just beyond -- Everest.  I was leaning and straining to grab this paper and just as I got it into my fingers, I lost my balance and the chair and I started to fall slowly into the trash can.  I ended with one arm and a shoulder in the can, and the rest of me on the ground in the exact same position I had been in when I was sitting, like a knocked-over Hubble figurine, my ass still in the seat. 

This time though, despite my long-accepted history of clumsiness, I blame the chair, a devious contraption with five gummed-up wheels and a narcissistic personality. This so-called “chair,” bored and dissatisfied, delights in the unexpected buck and roll -- dreaming, I suppose, of the rodeo. It is the celebrity of office chairs, rumored to have cost $1000 and given to our department by another agency that was being broken apart, apparently for wasting government money. I don't want to name the company that makes this chair, but let’s just call it the "Herman Munster Moron" chair.  If the chair had been more thoughtful, and sturdier in its convictions, I’m sure we wouldn’t have fallen over.

In all fairness, though, the trash can is also to blame --  a large metal bin left over from the cold war, it is too stubborn to quit, and instead  hides behind the cubicle wall, waiting for retirement.  If it had been more honorable in the performance of its duties, I’m sure it could have cajoled the paper to fall right into it, and I wouldn’t have had to reach for the paper, and the chair and I wouldn’t have fallen over into the can. 

The pencil, though, may be the source of all the problems. Bitter and disloyal, pencils are known to be the alcoholic parents of office supplies.  The pencil started the whole humiliating collapse into the can in the first place, by first encouraging me to write the list, “Look how sharp I am! Use me to make your dreams come true!” And then taunting me to throw it away later, “What a loser! Your dreams are stupid!”  No, your dreams are stupid, pencil!

To get myself out of the trash can, and out from under the chair, I had to actually fall down even more, and roll away from the can and chair and let them fight it out without me. There’s a reason I don’t wear dresses to work.  No one saw any of this happen -- this time.  I try to take a lesson from these sorts of events -- keep your nose to the ground, don't overextend yourself,  and if possible, wear a helmet.