I fell. Today. On a brief lunch break to let the new puppy out of crated captivity, I landed myself in a pile of mud. The “fenced in” backyard, which she was supposed to be using for urinary processing, turned out to have a get-a-way made in puppy heaven. As I emerged from a quick pee break of my own, I felt the shock of that sudden surge of adrenaline when your body is screaming: “ACT NOW” and you feel tingly all over.
As Lucy bounded for the opening with only the kind of wildness a puppy could muster, I took off down the stairs hoping to catch her tail before she, and her hysteria, escaped through the chain link fence. Due to my haste, I caught up to the little rascal, but only at the price of sending my business casual self through a small mudslide. You know that kind of mud that soaks through your pants before you even know you’ve hit the ground?
With two booted heels firmly emerged in clumpy wet dirt, an increasingly moist behind and a puppy extended upwards in both arms, as if to save her from a similar fate, I looked like the muddy, more humiliating re-creation of The Lion King image with a little black lab Simba.
As the wetness seeped in, the realization that, had she actually made it through the small window she was headed out of, I could merely have walked out of the gated yard, to the neighbor's, to calmly bring her back to her homeland. Alas, my bodily response of fight or flight had not served me well here.
Despite this fact and the other looming issue that there would never be enough time to manage an actual change of clothes before returning to my workplace, the laughter was unstoppable. Mud clumps fell heavily from my attire as I walked into the house but the laughter only increased when I turned to see the damage in the bathroom mirror. Breathing actually became difficult and the puppy sat staring at me, perplexed at my amusement.
You should know that, yes, several people back at the office asked if I knew there “was something on my pants.” (as if I could somehow have smeared that much mud across my backslide unknowingly??) Some may say that it was karma for all the belly laughs I’ve known watching people tumble off ladders and trampolines on America’s Funniest Home Videos, but I think it was a pleasant reminder that falling is always funny, even when, and especially when, mud is involved.
