"Fall" is in the air.

Yea, yea, the cooler weather is great but that's not the kind of fall I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of fall that hurts your pride and body; the kind of fall you don't see coming and to be honest, don't know if it is really going to happen until you are on the ground.

I went to clean the windows of a house yesterday and got there the same time some tile installers got there too. We were all getting our stuff out of our vehicles and chatting and trying to be cool yet professional. Don't act like you don't do it too. I have my bucket in one hand and my broom in the other. The broom is for sweeping the window sill and clearing out cobwebs.

I set my bucket down on the sidewalk and moved the broom to my left hand at the same time my left foot rested against a small stump in the grass. I'm too busy telling some witty story to the other guys to realize that my momentum was still easing leftward. Not very quickly, but still easing that way. I'm just to the really clever point in the story when I realize I'm slowly starting to lean.

No problem, the broom is there to hold me up and I'm comfortable with that. Ok, maybe too comfortable because now I'm leaning on it pretty heavily and my grip starts to tighten around the wooden handle. Am I falling? Not really sure. Still talking like nothing is happening but now the bristles on the broom start to fold under and I lean that much further over.

Wait, wait, uh oh, yep. I'm pretty sure I'm falling but it seems to be taking a really long time. My hand starts to slide down the broom handle and I see my right leg completely off the ground and rising. Now it's hard to look cool at this point and I don't remember what I was saying which makes me look even stupider as I continue to ease downward and to the left.

A few more minutes of this and I realize that I am for sure falling but the good news is that I only have about a foot to go before my left pocket hits dirt. It's too late to reverse course but I still have plenty of time to make needed adjustments and so I let go of the broom and put my left hand out to help me bounce right back up but there is a freshly clipped bush there and I cut my finger on it.

The reaction is to bring that hand up which now lets me fall even further over to the left and so I tried to squirm to the right but now where did all these bushes come from? I'm a turtle on its back for a couple of seconds thrashing around in a man-eating bush with a bloody finger and a story untold. I don't know what's worse. And the whole process seems to have taken about an hour and a half.

I'm not sure how I got out of there. I may have blacked out from a total lack of coolness, I don't know, but by the time I managed to get out of there most of the guys had politely averted their eyes and had gone to work. Heck, you can't watch a guy fall all day. Anyway, for their sakes I hope to catch up to them again to finish my story. But I may wait til spring.