At this point, it may have occurred to some of you that I am not much of a planner.
I am a Big Picture Thinker. This means that I tend to jump into things with a vague gameplan and the attitude that everything will work out in the end, bc I am a protagonist and that is what I demand of my storyline. This has led to a surprising number of positive (or at least dramatic) outcomes! But usually only after an unnecessary expenditure of time, energy, and anguish.
This was one such occasion.
I had, in the back of my mind, assumed I would hide the Bedroom Door in the garage, since the garage was a hodgepodge of unpacked boxes and was one of the last place my sister would look. One detail: our bedrooms were on the second floor. The garage was down a flight of stairs. Twenty eight stairs, precisely. To reiterate, I had just discovered that the door in question weighed approx. 5-7 times my initial estimate.
I have many sterling qualities. The ability to adapt to unexpected circumstances was not, at this point, one of them.
I was tired, behind deadline, and above budget (in pain and injury). I was perhaps not thinking with astounding clarity. I had 150 pounds of bastardized mahogany wedged on a pile of beach towels, and the vague remembrance of a life sweeter and richer than the one at hand. I had misery in my heart, and a pounding in my head.
I carefully, very carefully, flipped the door clockwise on its side, wedging in additional beach towels as needed. Then I began to scoot the monstrous wooden headstone towards the stairs. Then there was more flipping, and some awkward tilting (bc of course the stairwell was situated in an awkward little cut off corner of the hall), and yes I ended up tearing my second-favorite pair of jeans, but eventually I got bane of my current existence propped up like a seesaw at the edge of the stairs. With some creative interpretations of the universal laws of physics (which in dire situations are really more of suggestions than ironclad laws) I managed to slither around the bannister and get right beneath the door, where I promptly grabbed onto the bottom edge and–dragged.
Again, I am not a planner, per se. But I managed to get down about…oh. Oh about five steps.
At this point I was met, suddenly and with great prejudice, with forces beyond my control. Gravity, most pressingly. I could not control the slide of the thing, was the issue. I very abruptly found myself halfway down the stairs, whilst realizing, with all the alarmed dignity I could muster, that I did not in fact want to be down the stairs after all. I backpaddled like a canoer who suddenly finds themselves riding a waterfall in the least preferable direction.
Somehow, it worked. I have no memory of how, exactly, or what gods or devils I might have called upon in those hateful moments, or what spiritual debts I might have been incurred. I’m sure I will meet with them one day, and have some fast talking to do. Whatever the cost to my shriveled soul: I got the goddamn door back up the fucking stair, so help me heaven so damn me hell.
Which put me–right back where I fucking started, actually. Well, not quite. I still had to get the door off the last step and onto the floor. Because of the constraints of earthly matters (i.e. walls), this required standing the accursed thing upright. On the very top of the stairs. Whilst I stood sandwiched between it. Between 150 pounds of lumber and a 28-step incline.
I want to point out that I do, against all odds, in fact have a terrific sense of balance. It comes, I think, from a lifetime of using the edge of reality as a jumping rope for funsies. I like to think that what happened next is not a reflection on my character or moral deserts, so much as a heavenly oversight. An angelic administrative error. Fate sneezing at an inopportune moment. The carelessness of lax and absent gods.
(Also, I was tired and sweaty and in a state of tormented heartbreak.)
I–stumbled. Very slightly. Barely a stumble. The slightest misstep. Just a toe out of line.
Of course, it came at the very instance when ten toes were all that stood between me and a downfall both literal and literary enough to rival the Tragedy of Icarus. That is to say, every toe was needed.
What followed was a moment of violence that echoed around the world, ricocheted off a brick wall, bounced back like a feral tennis ball thrown by the arm of Zeus himself, and beaned me straight in my hubris-inflated ego forehead.
Some would say I fell under the weight of my own arrogance. Personally, I subscribe it to gravity. Gravity, and 150 spiteful pounds of processed tree fiber. Which, for the record, is much heavier.
TBC. tip me if my clownish agony sates your foul bloodlust for mirth
