The World's Common Tater

My wife went to the office yesterday afternoon. I took that opportunity to vacuum the house since I didn’t need to worry about the noise. I put in my ear buds and sang loudly while I was doing it. Everything was good until the end. I vacuumed the stairs with the cord plugged in at the top. When I was done, I left the vacuum at the bottom of the stairs and went up to unplug it. On my way back down, I slipped and fell down four or five stairs and landed on top of the vacuum. I was generally OK. My shoulder hurt immediately after, but there was no lingering pain. I didn’t realize I had hurt my ankle until I took the dog for a walk after the rain ended. My ankle was hurting after and still hurts this morning. This. as my brother and niece reminded me on Facebook, was not my first incident with carpeted stairs. Carpeted stairs are my nemesis.

Before the main story, I will say that stairs in general seem be be an issue for me. I take them too fast every time and if I go too fast I stumble. Usually it is just a stumble and then I right myself. A lot of times I’m tripping up the stairs. I’m writing this like it happens all the time. It doesn’t happen all the time, but probably more than it does to people who don’t feel the need to sprint every set of stairs they encounter. It isn’t a new thing. I recall one occasion as a teen when I was going down to the basement to feed my dog, slipped and ended up at the bottom of the stairs covered in we dog food. I do have a habit of falling at the worst times. The worst of these involve my daughter.

We were at my in-laws house for Christmas when my daughter was a toddler. They have a steep set of carpeted stairs. At the bottom of the stairs is a grandfather clock. My daughter had recently learned to climb stairs. While we were there she climbed those stairs. I was worried about her coming back down because she was only wearing socks and the carpet is slick. I had visions of her falling and hitting her head on the clock. I ran up the stairs and picked her up to carry her back down. As I turned I slipped and fell down the stairs while holding her. I was able to turn myself to protect her head and kept my hand around her head to prevent a head injury. I hit the bottom and we thought everything was OK. It seemed I had taken the brunt of the fall and she was OK. It seemed that way until she tried to sand up and couldn’t put weight on one of her legs. We took her to the ER and it was confirmed that her leg was broken. It seems while I was protecting her head her leg went under me and turned in a bad way. We were questioned by the doctor to make sure there was no child abuse, they put her in a cast and we continued the vacation. We have tons of Christmas photos of he with her cast. I don’t think I will ever reach a point where that is forgotten.

The moral of the story – don’t be like me. Walk slowly on stairs. Maybe use the railing. Consider not carpeting stairs. Will I learn that lesson? Probably not.