I Fall Down A Lot (Gravity Cannot be Beaten)

(This fell down too)

I fall down a lot. Far more than most people. I have fallen down more times to date than most people would in four life times. This is not because I am clumsy, although clumsiness or “clutziness” as some would refer to it does run in my family. My mother is, how should we say, prone to falling. But falling down isn’t something you get from your mother. The falling down gene is passed through the father, and my father never falls down. Of course, he never really gets up either, so my sampling of the genetic pool may be flawed. However, my particular problem with falling down is a direct consequence of my line of employment. I’m a forest technologist. A “registered” forest technologist as a matter of fact. I belong to a professional association and everything. I have a framed piece of paper that says so ( although to my understanding, professional associations are just groups of people who collect $321 per year from you, and grant you the privilege of being able to say that you “belong”….I used to have friends with similar values…I weeded them out). Anyway, I spend my days walking around in the forest, or rather, where the forest used to be, counting little trees. This may seem like a mindless task, but I assure you that it requires most of my attention, as the terrain in these parts is rather perilous. And my work is important…do not dismiss the counting of trees…if no one counted the trees, our society would fall into anarchy and collapse, quite possibly disappearing like the Mayans did. Getting back to the subject at hand, the aforementioned framed piece of paper does not protect against the overbearing, and unjust law of gravity. The upshot is that after over a decade working in the former forests of this province, I have become a “good” faller. I can fall with the best of them. I can fall with the ranks of skydivers or Olympic platform diver, or those Mexicans that huck themselves off cliffs at resorts in Aculpoco. The only difference is that it is hard to look graceful, or indeed direct a fall of less than three feet. But my reflexes are sharp….sharper than one of those sharp things fencers jab at each other with. Falling down is such a part of my life now that I think I would miss it if I couldn’t do it daily.