Balance. Equilibrium. Stability. Remaining perpendicular. These are never easy things to achieve. Just ask former first lady Nancy Reagan (or even skateboard enthusiast and “How to Stitch” crooner, Lil Wayne).
According to AP:
“Former first lady Nancy Reagan is said to be doing fine after stumbling as she was escorted into an event at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley.
KNBC-TV video shows the 90-year-old Reagan walking into the room on the arm of Florida Senator Marco Rubio Tuesday night when she apparently lost her balance. The crowd can be heard gasping as Rubio catches her before she falls to the floor. Several people in the crowd then swarm her, and Rubio and the others help her get to her seat.
Rubio was invited by Reagan to speak at the library.
Library spokeswoman Melissa Giller told KNBC that the former first lady wasn’t hurt. Giller says Reagan apparently tripped on a post used for crowd control.”
Guuuuurrrl. I know how you feel.
Let me tell you about a clumsy little blogger who used to go by the nickname “Stumbelina.” I got that nickname from my dear friend Sonny when we were besties in Dallas back in the mid-to-late 90s. For a while, my dear friend even kept a running tab of stumbles – like, literally carried a piece of paper with little marks on it. That particularly fun-for-me project had to be abandoned when the sheer excessiveness of my affliction rendered the effort impossible.
I fall upstairs. I fall downstairs. I’ve fallen nowhere near stairs. I’ve fall in showers at nice hotels and required nine stitches. (That’s a true story. New Orleans, October 2010. My most epic spill to date.)
My favorite place to fall is, apparently, on metro escalators. One time I fell because my heel got caught in the hem of my pants and sent me tumbling (pretty sure I pulled my arm out of my socket trying to catch myself). Another time, I was on my way to meet someone for a run on the Mall and tangled my legs (no reason) and went bouncing down the escalator on my right hip. I had the gnarliest black, purple, green, yellow bruise for about three months.
About two months ago, I fell, in my own house, while carrying two empty plates and a couple of small ramekins containing soy sauce from the living room to the kitchen. Hindering my awesome and well-honed plate clearing skills? Two tiny stairs from our living room to the dining room. These are stairs I have successfully navigated probably hundreds of thousands of times. (Ok, a couple of other times not-so-successfully. I did fall down these same two stairs one time while carrying a scalding hot cup of tea, which I proceeded to slosh into my lap. Red thighs anyone?) I still don’t know why my toe caught on the stair this particular time and sent me, and the soy sauce, flying, but fly we did. The pale yellow dining room walls sustained minor soy sauce-related damage from that particular event.
In fact, right around the same time that poor Mrs. Reagan was taking her spill in California on Tuesday, this girl right here (two thumbs pointing at myself) tripped and bit it on a very busy DC sidewalk. We’re talking total face plant. As in, cell phone clattering and skidding out of my flailing hand. As in, people stopping to help our poor heroine regain the upright position. As in, painfully limping the rest of the way to my destination, covered in embarrassment and shame.
Yeah. And that was AFTER I had swapped out my gorgeous 4-inch mustard colored stilettos for a pair of practical, if ugly flats, in full recognition that me and sidewalks do not get along. That’s right. I took PRECAUTIONS. And still I stubbed my flats-covered toe on a crack in the sidewalk and went stomach surfing in broad daylight in full view of the busy street, park and White House. I blamed aftershocks from the earthquake.
At least Mrs. Reagan is 90 years old. Lil Wayne had moving wheels under him. What’s my excuse?