No, I did not have a nice trip this fall

I thought that I had fallen in pretty much every conceivable way: leaning forward, leaning sideways, tipping over backward coming out of a subway car, being pulled over by a dog playing tug-of-war and countless other ways. Because of these experiences, I usually have an inkling I might fall. The incident this morning, however, took me by surprise.

I had gotten up about 4 a.m. to go to the bathroom, and because my eyes were used to the dark, I left the lights off. That was fine and I got beck to the bed afterward fine. I stood up out of my chair and out my hand on the bed to transfer into it. But in the dark I didn't know I was too far away from the bed so my hand rested on air and then I fell.

Well, first I slammed down chest-first on to the power chair joystick, then I fell to the ground. The joystick is actually just a little metal rod because the cover falls off so that kind of hurt, and it raised the question: What the heck is up with my guardian angel?

I decided it might be a fat couch potato named Doug, who watches my life unfold on a giant flat-screen TV. He enjoys the Three Stooges aspect of my daily falls, so he only lends a hand to keep me alive. Because if I died, he'd lose his entertainment. Of course he is slow getting off the couch, too, so a lot of my pratfalls happen before he can stop them.

It might also be a scrawny little runt of a guardian angel named Inga after Terri Garr's character in "Young Frankenstein." Not the sharpest tool in the shed, either. But she tries.

In the "put the candle back" scene in "Young Frankenstein, Frederick asks Inga to push as hard as she can on the other side of the bookcase. Inga, the character not the angel, backs up, gets up a full head of steam and runs at the bookcase. She succeeds in moving it.

This is, I imagine what happened this morning. Not strong enough to prevent the fall, Inga, the angel not the character, ran at me full force and knocked me so that the metal rod just raked across my chest instead of puncturing it.

Not too reassuring, huh?

I told my mom about the fall and I laughed at how horrified she looked "It isn't funny," she said. I pointed out that if it wasn't funny, I might cry until my tear ducts run dry (actually, I said I might kill myself, but now I am going with the tear thing).