I Fall Down Stairs

I fall down stairs a lot.

I have never broken so much as a toe. I know you’d say I’m clumsy, but would you say I’m lucky… or unlucky?

When I was a child, my mother would come running when she heard the thumping – the tell-tale clue that I was bouncing down the stairs. After a while she stopped running to my aid and would just call out from the couch, “You OK?”

Once, when I was in college and working at the Potsdam Museum, I slipped on ice at the top of the stone steps and landed on my ass on the sidewalk, about eight feet away, without hitting a single step on the way down. There was no one to applaud but me. This photo from the museum’s collections shows the Center shortly after its completion. (Note the steps I fell down, on the right!) At the…