I hope that I'm not the
only one that this happens to. The scene can be set anywhere: college
campus, busy street, office building. The players are the
boy and the
pretty girl.
The
boy is strolling casually when he takes note of the
pretty girl.
Surreptitiously, he attempts to get a good look at her without her particularly noticing. This takes up quite a lot of mental
capacity. Suddenly, he finds himself completely
incapable of finding purchase on the ground. His feet
flail about for a moment and then he finds himself in the
embarassing situation of either clumsily catching himself as he falls or simply falling, flat out, and lying
in a daze.
Generally, there is
nothing that could have been tripped over, unless you count the cracks in the
sidewalk or a stray
leaf blown down by the brisk
autumn breeze. It is a
mystery. The
boy attempts to recover by
tying his shoes or glancing down at the obstacle-free ground and nodding to himself, as if he'd spotted the
nefarious object that had tripped him. The more
self-effacing might offer a
sheepish smile to the
world at large. Regardless of the
cover-up, the fact remains: the
boy just tripped over absolutely nothing while checking out a
pretty girl and trying not to be
obvious about the entire affair. The
boy feels like a loser. The
girl, generally, is
oblivious to what happened, as the
trip most often occurs just after she's walked past. The worry, of course, is that she'll turn to
discover the source of the pedestrian
disturbance. The beleaguered
boy, at this stage, will have
ample opportunity to get a look at her.
For the record, she's generally quite
attractive. And
laughing.
For me, this is an
occurrence which is common enough that, well, I wrote a
node about it. Am I
alone in going from
graceful dude to
prostrate loser when the needs for
locomotion and subtle
scrutiny collide?