I Fell

Down the stairs, to be precise. And no, I don't mean that half-assed fall where you step wrong and roll your ankle over to the side and feel as if you are standing ON YOUR ANTERIOR ANKLE BONE (a sensation quite unique in and of itself). NO, I mean FALL. As in Falling, Out Of Control, and Chaos.

All I was trying to do was catch the freakin' mailman. My boss has such a gift of Catching Every Detail Imaginable, and he was so kind as to kindly remind me that it was now five minutes past three, and why the hell was I sitting there and NOT TAKING THE MAIL DOWN RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

So, I obliged, and ran into our mail room, postmarked those letters in like, the fastest time ever, and sprinted out into the hall, with the admonitions of "If he's gone, then you better not leave that mail down there, we'll have to find some other way to get it out today, that letter HAS TO BE IN TENNESSEE TONIGHT...." ringing in my ears.

Waiting for the elevator, wondering if I might be making a special trip to Tennessee myself in a few minutes, waiting for the elevator, trying to decide whether it would be best to come back up and tell my boss that I had missed the mailman or just run away to Mexico immediately, WAITING FOR THE FREAKING ELEVATOR - Ok, stairs. Fast.

This is when things, or me, rather, started going downhill fast. I usually take the stairs rather than the elevator, for several reasons:

A) I sit on my ass all day long, and It Is Getting Fat.
B) The elevator often does this little game where it stops on a floor that you never selected, and then refuses to open its doors.
C) The elevator is really slow.
D) The elevator usually smells like chemically altered peaches.

E) The elevator sucks.

The only reason I was going to take the elevator down in this perilous and time-sensitive situation is because I wasn't exactly sure of my timing down the stairs in the heels I was wearing. I can normally estimate within about 2 seconds whether it will be faster to take the elevator or run, but these particular shoes had not been properly clocked as of yet. However, the elevator was obviously Bent On Ruining My Life, and was refusing to light up the little down arrow on my floor, so I made the call to Traverse the Stairs, and prepared myself for the fastest-ever-stair-descent this side of Preston Road. The fact that I go up and down those stairs at least twice every day for the last 8 months in all types of Fabulous Heels has given me quite a lot of confidence in my All-Terrain Running In Heels Abilities, and there is then, therefore, and henceforth, no feasible excuse for why One Such As Myself might have fallen down an entire flight of them.

But, I did. And I fell that horrible way where you catch your toe, turn your ankle, trip over your own leg, and grasp desperately at everything in reach to OH PLEASE ANYTHING PLEASE STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING, but there's nothing to grasp on a concrete wall.

So I fell, and laid at the bottom of the stairwell, and the hard, unforgiving, concrete stairs laughed at me, saying, "People HERE don't take the stairs, you stupid girl. They sit on the elevator in their Prada shoes and Marc Jacobs tweed jackets, and hold their Starbucks venti non-fat, no-whip, soy lattes and refuse to look at each other. And that's where YOU would be too, if you only had the shoes and the jacket and no soul. BUT YOU DON'T! Ha!" And so I was doubly mocked; kicked while I was down, AND I don't remember telling ANYBODY that I wanted that Marc Jacobs tweed jacket.

I sat last night with an ice pack on my swollen ankle and tried to decide if catching the mailman was consolation enough for the whole catastrophe. But I just can't get over the feeling of crawling up the stairs, gathering my spilled mail, and feeling like an 87 year old woman; alone, and mocked by the empty concrete stairwell.