Falling over sucks.

Going arse over tit sure as shit gets harder the older you get.

It seems according to my somewhat dimming memory, that I spent a lot of time on my bum when I was a youngster, no not out of laziness or stubbornness, but because I had been attempting something ridiculous and being merely mortal, was unable to counter gravity, science is a pisser that way.

Some splatterings are still accessible memories, like the time when I was 11 and doing some foolhardy fly through the air thing on the uneven parallel bars and I flew up up up and like in a cartoon, there was that exaggerated moment of stillness before I slammed, back first, down onto the floor. The coach didn't believe in mats and told me to get up and have another go. Yeh No! The bars were never my friends after that. Fucking things! And whilst I can see all this play out in my mind all these years and kilos later, it didn't really stop me doing shit.

And then there was the time we were on a family holiday in the pink place on Chevron Island and the diving into the pool had gotten all a bit tame and ordinary, so I started back flipping into the water. As I practiced and practised, I took off higher and higher and the flip became tighter and tighter, and I can still hear my lovely Dad call out, ' Push out, not so high, you will bang your head on the wall.' Yeh I knew he couldn't be talking to me, what wall? Oh shit bloody head, that wall. In the 80's AIDs craziness they would have had to drain the pool cos of all the blood, but in the 60s they just cleaned me up and told me to get back out there, and so I did.

But as you get older there is a real fear of falling.

Out in the park sometime ago, Dog and Sam were playing and getting rough as they do, and they  ran right into me, taking my legs from under me and I landed inelegantly spread eagled, with 10 bucks worth of coffee all over me. I sat for a while waiting for the youthful 'jump up' factor to kick in, but it didn't. Somewhere in my adulthood, that elastic bounce backability had evapourated and I was now just some fat old gal on her arse on the ground trying to work out the best way to haul myself up. With shit for knees, I need to do a sort of crazy woman roll over and balance myself on my pathetically weak arms and go the push, the bum end leads and I do a bit of the downward facing dog making my face all bloodshot and if I am lucky I can manage to be vertical in one try. Other times I pivot around on my arse with legs and arms flailing, like I am the cup and saucer on the Disney ride. I imagine it's all very amusing to watch, like some anxiety ridden flubber raging from desperation to stillness as I struggle to have another go.

Anyway, yesterday a friend of mine fell in the park.

I saw it in slow motion.

She panicked about being able to get up.

I put my coat under her head and told her to take it easy for a second and then our 2 dogs who have spent day after day happily playing decided that the stress of watching all this was too much so they had a big barking rouse at each other, which was so loud that the builder from across the way heard it and saw us and doned his chivalry superman cape and came to help.

My friend calmed down and Superman and I helped her up.

She said that falling was the thing she was most afraid of. She worried all the time that if she falls she will not be able to get up.

But you know what? I reckon that there is more good than shit in people and that if we fall, more than likely there will be someone around to give us a hand up, and so the fear of falling aught not stop us having a go.

How's that for philosophical Tuesday? yeh I just made that up cos the last bit made me wonder if I had begun to stream live from some evangelical Baptist Sunday service.