Thursday, February 12, 2009



Okay, I'll admit it...I take immense pleasure out of catching people in awkward or embarrassing moments. I know...it's kind of mean spirited. But having had sooo many myself, I can always immediately empathize with the sufferer, and if I happen to catch some eye contact, I always give them that understanding "I've totally been there man" look.

One of my favorite acts to witness is a little something that I like to call "the sidewalk stumbler". These are the people, usually men, that you see tripping over their own feet while strutting their hardest mean walk down the street. I have seen this happen so many times, that I can usually predict how the victim will recover from the stumble, even before he makes his very calculated decision. But today I saw a phenomenon unlike any other...

Usually the stumbler is going to do one of two things...there's the "trip and jog", where the victim will stumble over his own foot and will immediately break into a light jog, as if he decided in that very moment that he really needed to increase his cardiovascular fitness. And then there's the "trip and terror", where the victim will lose his footing, and a look of sheer terror will creep across his face, as if he has just been subjected to an unimaginable atrocity. He will then look around to see who else saw the stumble with a frightfully perplexed look on his face .

Today, however, was a real treat. The stumbler, a young thugged-out man dressed in oversized clothing...stumbled on the sidewalk, teetered backwards as if he may fall, lifted his knee, and brought his Timberland encapsulated foot to the ground with a smack. He then proceeded to break into a variation of a stomp dance. The "dance" even had lyrics to go along with it, which he sang loudly as he stomped the remaining length of the block.

It was absolutely effin' brilliant.


1 comment:

  1. If you can "trip and jog", why not trip and "interpretive dance"?

    ReplyDelete