> A slip and a fall  –

The serious side of a “slip and fall” of course relate to potential injury or damage to self and other items involved in the event. Like slipping from a rung and falling off a ladder while trying to hang an expensive framed shadowbox with antique porcelain plates. Sprained ankle, broken finger, busted shadowbox and plates (didn’t happen to me, but nicely illustrates the point). Now if that is in a video clip on America’s Funniest videos or on YouTube, we crack up seeing it.

I have laughed and cursed when I have fallen. It just depended on my mood at the time, the pain I felt or how humiliating it was. I have often laughed at others when they slipped or fell, or slipped and fell, and in some cases then found myself helping them through their ordeal while trying to control my laughter. The humor can give way quickly to concern, but most of the time, I find seeing someone falling down pretty funny.

I was in Chicago many years ago, down in the Financial District. In my suit, tie, fine leather shoes, wool overcoat, very “business-like”. I was with two co-workers and attending a meeting with our companies Senior Vice President of Sales, our President of Operations, and several others at our corporate headquarters. If you are familiar with Chicago, the building is on Wacker street right by the river, a beautiful building with several glass revolving doors that open to the wide sidewalk. If you are familiar with Chicago in the winter, you will know the “The Windy City” can also be the “snowy, icy, freezing-ass-bitter-cold, windy fucking city”, as it was this day of our meeting. I’ve seen people literally leaning into the wind to walk there on several occasions. I’ve seen umbrellas flipped inside out and ripped from the carrier’s hands. One gust snatched away four different people’s umbrellas and a hat all at once, and that was funny, even funnier, as the guy who had lost his hat was now frantically clutching his askew toupee, more on his forehead and face really than on his head now. None of them fell down though.

On this particular shitty day, on our arrival to the meeting it was the “snowy, freezing-ass-bitter-cold, windy-fucking-city” without the “icy”.  We arrived by cab and quickly scurried from cab door, to revolving door, into the building’s warmth very quickly. The meeting was held, blah, blah, blah, we got what we came for and an hour and a half later were ready to go and celebrate our accomplishment with a big Chicago steak and a few cocktails. The place we were heading was only a few blocks down Wacker street. I don’t recall the name of the place, but it had a great restaurant that by evening became a jazz club. We had planned a fly in, go to meeting, fly out sameday, but as is often the case with winter flights in and out of Chicago’s O’Hare airport (and especially flights between Denver’s DIA and O’Hare in winter) our evening flight was delayed, three hours. Which actually meant that was probably going to get pushed as the weather got worse and there was no way we were going to head to O’Hare and end up spending a night in that god-awful place packed with a bazillion cranked travelers, so we did the proactive thing and got a hotel for the night in the city.

OK, meeting mission accomplished, bundled up and happy to head off to an early dinner, drinks and a night in “Chi-Town” , with a hotel room warm and awaiting when through. As we got off the escalator in the lobby and headed toward the wall of revolving doors, through the glass windows you could see people inching along, heads down braving the nasty weather. Through the revolving door we go, me leading the way and stepping out, “oh shit it’s a sheet of fucking ice, ahhhhhh” comes from me as I begin my slide aided by my fine leather soles and a wind against my back that feels like a big burley Chicago south-side guy is pushing me. I catch a brief fleeting glimpse of my buddies not stepping out of the revolving door behind me, but continuing their spin through the revolving door back into the lobby. I also realized the everyone else on this twelve foot wide sideway ice rink,  are all at the very edge of the sidewalk, single file, right up against the wall of the building using it to steady themselves. Nice of them to let me step through onto this icy runway! Now I had blown/slid about three feet down the walk without ever moving my feet and I’m heading at an angle away from the building, down the walk, and toward the street curb and gutter, and I’m gaining speed!  My coat like a sail on my personal ice racer and I’m now maybe ten feet from the door I had just stepped from, everyone watching, nobody reaching out to help save my ass, and I see smiles on some faces! As I head faster down the walk and now have a line toward the gutter and know I am seriously going to eat it any second, I go into a crouch, kinda like when as a kid we’d “speed skate” at the roller-skating rink. I’m still on my feet in a couched little ball and as I get close to the gutter I grab for a parking meter pole. That stops my arms and upper body, but feet and legs go whipping around the pole, a 180 and then I am flat on my back half in the gutter twenty five feet from the door and people are laughing, cheering and a few now managing to cross the icy abyss and are lending a hand to help me up. My “friends” show up too, laughing, and inform me they went out a south door where the sidewalk has been treated. They tell me that was the greatest balancing act they’ve ever seen and that people inside were rooting me on to stay up! A real good time for all the inside on-lookers - “How far do you think he’ll slide? Look at him go. Geezus he’s go’n down any second now. Twenty bucks says he takes a header at the curb.” And so on.

Needless to say this was the story told and retold all night long between us, and to pretty much anyone who would listen, including a guy who had come into the bar later, he recognized me as he’d been one of the “inside-on-lookers”, He bought us a round of drinks and his telling to his band of buddies in that great Chii-caah-goh accent was the highlight of the night. The steak was good, the Jazz terrific, and to this day I smile and chuckle about that trip – well not a trip and fall, but that slip and fall on the trip to The SIFABCWFC (“snowy, icy, freezing-ass-bitter-cold, windy fucking city”). 

Chicago, my kinda town!