Every winter, see Pappy fall.
And not the momentarily-losing-your-balance-before-slipping-on-your-ass falling down, the kind where your embarrassed face blushs red, betrayed by the laws of gravity but momentous, gorgeous flights of fancy, legs kicked forward, arms flailing, what aerodynamic engineers refer to as sheer horizontal. The type that Looney Tunes animators masturbate about.
Previous theories as to her malady centered on her high center of gravity. That her long, scrawny barely chicken legs ill-supported her top-heavy torso which to complicate matters further threw off her already skewed sense of equilibrium when carrying the additional load from a huge backpack slung over either shoulder (her noticable lack of calf muscle in itself lacked the necessary ballast to offset any imbalance). This awkward and uneven distribution of weight caused teetering steps that lacked firm footing on any icy surface. Someone once even suggested ankle weights to prevent further accidents.
But last weekend at night coming home from a wedding picking up the boy gingerly tiptoeing down eight concrete steps on unseen black ice scored a perfect Nadia Comaneci as she went face forward, a projectile arc that resulted in five hours in the emergency room, a CAT scan, seven stitches above her lip, two chest x-rays and a whole bottle of prescription Vicodan.
It is her birthright, an annual tradition and painfully, a bloody curse.