adding insult to injury. literally.

So, yesterday, like every other day, I went to the vending machine upstairs for my morning can of cranberry juice. But this time, the vending machine hated me, and refused to take my dollar bill. I didn't fret much because 5 feet to the right is a change machine. But the change machine also refused to take my dollar bill. So, pissed off and thirsty, I left the kitchen.

I used my high-tech proximity card to open the door to the stairs back down to my floor. It's one of those split stairwells, with 6 or 7 stairs, then a landing, then 6 or 7 more stairs, then the floor. I was still fussing about my juice when it became frighteningly obvious that one of my feet was aborting the stair-descending process.

Presumably, the heel of my shoe was caught in the cuff of the opposite pant leg, but I'm not really sure what happened. But I wiggled my foot and tried to plant it on a step while exercising a death grip on the railing. I did get my foot free, but thanks to gravity and the inertia I already had going down the stairs, I totally missed the step, and next thing I know, I'm going down, aiming head-first for the wall that encases the landing halfway down the stairs.

With my second thunderous crash in about a week, I managed to prevent any major head injuries by bracing the wall with my hands and landing on my knee. Pain was instant, as was humiliation. At first I didn't move at all, hoping that if I was very still and didn't whimper, people would think someone just dropped a very large box, and wouldn't come looking. The plan worked, and I eventually stood back up, re-attached my flopping traitor shoe, and hobbled down the second half of the staircase attempting to look as casual, normal, and non-chalant as possible. I rehearsed my schpeal: "Me? Fall down the stairs at work? No, you must have just heard that man who just dropped a very large box. Yes, I helped him pick everything up on my way up to get my juice."

Back at my desk, I pulled up my pant leg to see instant bruising and swelling around me knee. It looked very nice next to the bruising from the Fire Alarm Incident. I popped some Advil, and whined all afternoon about how much it hurt. (I also embraced the irony, or perhaps I should say premonition, over predicting something like this happening YEARS ago.)

A few hours later, I had to go to the doctor. As doctors tend to do (and much to the continual amusement of my sister, even now at the ripe age of 22), she wanted to test the reflexes in my legs. Before I could think, she pulled back and slammed that little rubber triangle hammer...right into my bruise. My leg twitched little--the rest of me twitched a lot, and I groaned in attempt to stifle the huge profanity that was about to fly out of my mouth.

In the end, I laughed about it. I mean, it could have been worse. What if I'd gotten my juice and the compressed beverage can knocked me in the head when I tumbled? Or, what if had happened earlier when I was showing the new guy where the kitchen was? Or what if I'd fallen down the second half of the staircase, and rolled right into the main hallway in front of half the office? That would have REALLY sucked. So I guess in the end, a little rubber triangle hammer ain't the biggest problem. But it still hurt.