Faller

The Faller will be the first in my Friends series. Let me preface this by saying that her name will be perhaps the most appropriate of all nicknames that shall be formulated hereafter. The Faller falls. Every day. Multiple times a day. If she's not falling, then she's thinking about not falling, and her feet are plotting against her.

Faller is a beautiful girl with an incredible wit about her. She's always doing or saying something hilarious, but in a Will Ferrell not-trying-to-be-funny way. She'll probably tell me she's insulted for the comparison.

My first Faller in action memory occured at our favorite hang out, a bar back in our college town where we could be found many week nights, and certainly every weekend night. We hadn't been friends for long, so I had yet to hear of her inexplicable tendency to wind up on the ground.

On this particular evening, she had been on a date night or something of the sort, so she was wearing a short dress and cute sandals. I still want to sandals. I might steal them when she's not looking. Faller was perched up on a bar stool outside on the patio, talking to a circle of 3 friends. Myself included. Behind faller was a picnic table, where a homeless man with an uncanny resemblence to St. Nick was taking a nap. And by taking a nap I mean passed out.

I don't know exactly what transpired to make her turn and look back, but when she did, Faller's chair went back with her, onto Santa. Not only did she fall, but she kicked my drink out of my hand, which propmtly went airborn, then descended back down- onto her. Santa was startled out of his nap, and quickly asked her if SHE was okay. "Sir i have a home and more than one pair of shoes, are you okay?" was her response. Classic. This was the first of many falls.

The other, and most infamous of all her many falls, incident that I will talk about in this post is the Mystery Fall. We don't know quite how it happened actually. One Sunday morning, I called her to be let into her apartment to retrieve my belongings. It took her a good 5 minutes to get down stairs, and when she opened the door I knew why. Faller had two scrape/gashes on each of her shins. It looked like someone had hit her across her legs with a lead pipe wrapped in sand paper. I would have cried. I guess it was business as usual for her.

The next day, my charitable self took her to the doctor that her mother had located for her to have her legs checked out. Hands down THE most memorable/hilarious doctor's visit of my lifetime. I guess the fact that we had to drive through the ghetto to get there should have been an indicator of what was lying ahead.

We pulled up to an office that looked like a clinic for homeless people funded by a non-profit organization that probably couldn't even afford phones. It was that kind of place. Once we were in, a troll of a woman entered the room. I thought she was the Nurses Aid. Turns out, she was the doctor. This woman had to turn sideways to get through the door. She spoke in one word phrases, and barked answers. Once inside the room, she sat on a stool and scooted herself around the room. The fact that Faller had no clue what had happened to her didn't help matters. Try explaining a drunken escapade to a 400 pound woman with toenails thicker than cardboard and feet jammed into sandals that look like she shoes my dad wears out in the yard to scoop up dog poop. You get nowhere.

After the roughest examination I've ever witnessed, the doctor said "Looks bruised." Oh, really doc? No kidding. She gave the wounded Faller nothing. No pain killers, no sympathy, no nothing.

So, we got her crutches and hobbled back to the car. And I laughed all the way home.

*Our best estimation is that she fell on the stairs in the alley leading up to her apartment, although we can't rationalize a way in which she could fall and sustain such an injury. And she doesn't remember. So maybe she DID get hit with a pipe.