For me, it was last week when I was coming down the stairs. The light of the bathroom I had just exited was very bright and the room was dim, and I completely missed the last stair. It caught me totally by surprise but I managed to not fall flat on my face.
Ok, I am sure some of the clutzy people here have better stories than that. Feel free to share your most spectacular falls, if you like.
Two months ago. I was walking to my car in a grocery store parking lot and all of a sudden I was on the ground. Don’t even have any idea what happened, but I messed up my ankle but good. I didn’t break it (had xrays because I thought I might have), but it was a severe sprain that left me unable to put any weight on it for a week, crutches for another week, a cane for two more weeks, and physical therapy.
To this day I don’t know what happened. But my physical therapist explained some things about the way synapses in the muscles and tendons work, and I guess I just had slow impulses that day because that’s probably why I didn’t know what was going on until I was rolling on the ground. I still don’t have full range of motion.
Plus I’m just clumsy. I trip over stuff a lot.
Getting off the bus at the station, with about 50 witnesses. :smack:
As I stepped on the top step, my foot caught a wet, slick spot, and I went down three steps, head first, landing on the sidewalk.
Several people rushed to my aid, which was very nice, but holy cow, was that ever embarrassing.
Luckily, I only caught a minor scrape.
Three weeks ago yesterday… I was minding my own business, walking across the parking lot into my work place, and wham! I’m flat on my back, looking up at the sky, thinking to myself, “What the hell just happened?”
Wow.
Oh yeah, and to make matters worse, this was in the parking lot of a bank, in front of the drive thru and the teller windows. I had an audience for the entire spectacle. I even laid there for a couple of moments just to gather my wits. Thankfully, there is a chiropractic office on the next block, and he had some open time that afternoon and was able to fit me in.
Fully healed and back to normal now, but I definately don’t plan on a repeat performance.
Yesterday, right after Biochemistry. We were studying the effect of chemicals on the brain, which was rather appropriate (though not as appropriate as it would have been had I ever used such chemicals). I felt a little nauseous, left to go to the bathroom, and actually passed out on my way. Scared the heck out of me, I’ve never fainted or anything other than that.
Just before Christmas. I was walking down the sidewalk on my way to get the ferry to head over to my parents’ place for a few days. I tripped, and because I had a duffel bag on one shoulder, lost my balance and hit the sidewalk hard. I tore up both hands pretty badly (both palms, plus a big cut on my right thumb), and worse, I cracked the display on my digital camera 
I guess it shows where my priorities are, though, since my thoughts went “Oh shit. I hope nobody saw that…I hope my iPod’s all right, better check…uh oh, blood.” Luckily, I was just around the corner from a walk-in clinic, so I got to start my Christmas holiday with a visit to a doctor who told me I was slightly overreacting when I thought my thumb needed sutures, but a tetanus shot would be a good idea.
Somehow, I made the ferry only an hour later than I’d intended, where I got to do the electronics inventory and discover that while the iPod and phone were fine, the camera hadn’t fared so well.
The last time? That’s easy. Christmas day. I was in a cooking frenzy, rushing around the kitchen. Hit a slippery patch (were I must have spilled something) on the way to the refridgerator. Went down, flat on my face. I was so high on cooking adrenaline I just got up and went on with dinner. It wasn’t till the next day I noticed both my knees were eight shades of purple. They still hurt now.
Haven’t been more injured than that but my mom managed to break her leg slipping on wet grass.
And my ex-SO…well, I couldn’t pick his best fall. I sometimes can’t pick his best fall of the week. He’s a skateboarder. 'Nuff said.
A couple of weeks ago I was bottlefeeding the kittens about 3 in the morning. I had taken them to bed with me to feed them, and got up to put them back in the bathroom when they had finished eating. I had a kitten in each hand and caught my foot on the comforter. I knew I was falling, but was mainly concerned with not landing on the kittens, so I didn’t drop them. I landed on my side with my next-to-the-little toe bent back in the comforter. Kittens were fine but I think my toe is broken - it is swollen and purple, and hurts unless I keep it taped to the one next to it.
My mother always said I was a clumsy child.
In Walmart just before Christmas, fercrissakes. I was headed toward the scarves and I hung a sharp left just after a skid of stuff that was being unloaded. Little did I know that there was an empty palate behind the one I saw. It was very dramatic…forms being filled out, Walmartians helping me to a chair. My husband said, “What the fuck, Kalhoun! Are you OK?” and the lingerie lady almost had him removed from the store for swearing in a “family” oriented place.
A little over two years ago I took a pretty nasty spill. I pulled into my carport on a late moonless night and I couldn’t see anything once I turned my lights out. For some reason I walked around my car in the front instead of the back but I had forgotten the lawn mower attachment that was in my way and I stumbled and slammed into the ground pretty darn hard.
I live in a heavily wooded area and as I lay there in pain I thought, “Man, if there were still predators in these woods I’d really have something to worry about.” I was just fine but I did end up breaking my cell phone.
Marc
All the time, I’m clumsy. Recently, though, I fell down twice in three days, which was something of a personal best. The day before New Year’s Eve, I was leaving our building, I stept out of the front door and - WHAM! Feet went from under me - it was sleeting and the front step was like polished glass. I had to be helped up by a little old lady, which was ironic, and ended up with massive bruises on my left elbow and hip. Then on New Year’s Day, I was in the downstairs bit of a pub with assorted Dopers and Nadsers, I came running down the stairs, bounded into the room we were in - but completely missed the fact that there was a step there, tripped over it, and did a close approximation of that “sliding on your knees” thing that RAWK guitarists do, only considerably less stylishly. I still have bruised and swollen knees a fortnight later.
I’m always tripping/falling over and injuring myself. I won’t take the stairs if my hands are full, because I’m convinced that’s how I’m going to die - trip on the stairs, not be able to grab the handrail, and fall to my doom.
Last Saturday I slipt and fell flat out in a puddle of mud. How my friend didn’t laugh I’ll never know. I’m hanging onto that friend. She lent me some dry jeans too.
Personal best is when I tripped and went flying on holiday in Rome. I only slightly scraped myself but it looked really spectacular and a gentlemanly passer by was concernedly asking if I was okay and was fussing over me a bit. I was mortified but not really hurt so I assured him I was fine. My friend (same one actually) later resoundingly told me off : “He was really cute! Could you not have at least pretended you felt a bit faint?”
My executive guy Dad fell while crossing the street in Downtown Chicago during rush hour. He ripped his suit and was simultaneously trying to gather his wits and avoid being hit by a taxi. A passerby looked at him, called him “fat ass” and kept on walking. A morale deflater if I’ve ever seen one.
About a year and a half ago, late on a Friday night:
I’d been watching baseball and reading a book, and decided that it was finally time to go to bed. There were a bunch of plates and glasses and flatware and such on the coffee table from when we had dinner in front of the TV (because, you know, baseball) and I stacked them up to take to the kitchen and put in the dishwasher. In the process of standing up and starting to walk (a complex maneuver, I’m sure you’ll agree) I hooked the leg of the coffee table with my right foot on my first attempted step, stumbled, cracked my knee into the top of the stupid table, and went down hard. I actually had a half-second to think about the consequences of falling in the living room with a double handful of crockery, and made the questionable decision to save the plates and whatnot at all costs. I succeeded in my goal admirably - nothing I was carrying suffered so much as a chip, and I even managed to break my fall.
With my face. On hardwood.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that the very first thing to hit the floor was my nose, but the rest of my face caught up rapidly. My wife came running to see what the commotion was and was initially convinced that I’d somehow managed to kill myself with a coffee table. In retrospect I suppose there was an impressive amount of blood involved, but I still think she overreacted.
I went back to work the following Monday with a mug to frighten children with. My black eyes had faded into that ugly yellow/green/purple bruise color and the pressure cuts on the bridge of my nose were covered with huge scabs. I looked like I’d lost a heavyweight title fight.
I hate that friggin’ table.
Exgineer, owie.
Mine was last week. My boyfriend dropped me off at work, as the car was in the shop. I got out of the passenger seat, came around, and WHAM! slipped on an icy patch and fell down right in front of his car. Ow. I had gloves on, and I had landed on my hands, so they were OK but I had a big bruise on my shin for a few days.
A lady who was just entering the office stopped to turn around and see if I was OK, my boyfriend jumped out of the car, and some guy just stared at me.
**Kalhoun’s ** a girl?!
Not exactly a klutzy fall but last year I took my 7-year-old son to try out his new snowboard. After a while I insisted on a turn. He made it look so easy, but I was on my butt after about 6 feet.
The next week I overheard him on the phone to one of his friends: “My dad sucks at snowboarding.”
It’s been two years since I have had any significant fall. I was running down my stairs to grab the phone. As I reached the bottom stair my foot slipped. To make matters worse, there was a bed frame leaning up against the wall by the landing. My foot had hit it in such a way as to cut it, resulting in a small splash of blood on the wall and the front door.
Tuesday. I was getting a tub surround at Lowe’s. The six-by-six-foot box was jammed into the rack with the other boxes, and there were no handholds. Also no Lowe’s employees around. So I got my fingers into a corner and pulled. Got it about two feet out when the box ripped. I had a Wile E. Coyote moment when I seemed to be suspended, just as Wile E. Coyote is suspended for a moment after he goes over a cliff. Then I fell backwards onto my back and wrist, my head barely missing the glass shower doors in their heavy steel display frames.
Probably about an hour ago.
I fall down every day. I suffer from CC (Congenital Clumsiness) inherited from my butter-fingers, two-left-feet mother.
And I work in a museum! Carrying priceless artifacts!
I have perfected the art of falling down and not getting hurt. I can literally tumble down a flight of stairs while keeping a box aloft and unharmed and walk away with only an injured pride.
My gyno saw the bruises which cover my body and was convinced I was being abused. She sat me down for a Serious Talk after my appointment, and pressed a slip of paper into my hand bearing her home phone number. She told me she’d come and get me at any hour-- just call her. (Since she lives over an hour away, I was kinda touched.)
I insisted it was just clumsiness. She didn’t beleive me, I’m sure, until I got up to leave her office and tripped over her rolling stool. After that, she never mentioned it again. (Probably because it wasn’t the last time I tripped over that stool.)
About a week before Christmas, while hiking up a mountain. It was dark, we had no flashlights, and there were three fresh inches of snow on the ground. also, I was extrordinarly drunk. No serious damage sustained, though.
Last time I actually hurt myself falling was in August, when my bad (meaning worse than the other one) knee gave out as I was going down the stairs at home.