The death of me

Posted on July 14th, 2008 by Scott Stein

According to the most reliable sources, the mythological Cyclops was tortured by the precise advanced knowledge of when and how it would die.

I’m no mythological creature, but I too know the precise how — if not the when — of my death. I will die by tripping over shoes my wife has left on the floor. This is no joke, though when I do go plummeting down a flight of stairs, you can be sure that my wife will be laughing. She’ll stop laughing when it becomes clear that I am, indeed, deceased. She doesn’t wish me any harm. But while I’m hitting every step on the way down, my wife will be unable to contain her mirth.

One time, when we were dating, I was changing a light bulb outside her apartment’s front door. She was holding the ladder steady. Then the ladder began to shake — she not only wasn’t holding it steady, but had leaned into it with her doubled-over guffaws. The source of her amusement was a warning label on the side of the ladder, which pictured a man — a stick figure drawing — falling off of a ladder. Something about the figure’s face or posture was, apparently, hilarious. There’s no way to explain it. As a man on the ladder, trying not to look like the stick figure on the warning label, the hilarity escaped me. The irony of that label, which warned of the dangers of climbing a ladder without someone holding it steady, being the cause of the ladder not being held steady, did not escape me, but I still wasn’t laughing.

My wife is the target audience for America’s Funniest Home Videos and any show that airs footage of men accidentally getting smashed in the testicles by a child swinging a baseball bat or people tripping. The harder someone falls, the harder she laughs. It runs in the family. I hear that shortly after my wife’s mother remarried, her new husband fell while walking down the stairs. At the time, my future wife was living with them. The poor guy’s head dented the wall. Both women — my not-yet-wife and his new bride — were beside themselves. It was the funniest thing either of them had ever seen.

A couple of months ago I was with my wife and son at an indoor pool, where my son takes swimming lessons. My wife started laughing. I had been watching the pool and turned to ask her what was so funny, but she had tears in her eyes. She kept trying to speak, but couldn’t get the words out. It was out of control, truly hysterical laughter. Every time the laughter subsided and she started to talk, she lost it again. She finally calmed down enough to explain what was so funny, and told me, through tears and more laughter, that a kid had slipped on the wet tile and fallen to the floor. It got better. When the kid tried to get back up, he slipped again and fell. Not laughing yet? That’s because you didn’t see the boy’s father, who, in his haste to help his poor son, rushed onto the same wet floor and fell on his ass. I didn’t see it, either. Maybe it was funny (no one got hurt, after all). It must have been — my wife still talks about it: “Remember the time that kid fell at the pool…”

You can probably tell by now that seeing someone fall just about makes her day. Yet I don’t think she leaves shoes for me to trip over for her own entertainment. That’s a bonus. The shoes are there just because they’re there. And by there, I mean that my wife leaves her shoes everywhere. That isn’t quite true. She doesn’t leave them in out-of-the-way corners, or in any of our closet’s multiple shelves designed to hold shoes. She does leave them at the top of the stairs, at the bottom of the stairs, between my side of the bed and the bathroom, in the entranceway to our bedroom. If I didn’t know better, if my trust in her intentions for my wellbeing were not absolute, I would have no choice but to believe that her shoes were being strategically placed where they were most likely to cause me great physical harm. In the middle of the night, whether I am going to the bathroom or to my son who’s called out, the shoes are there, just waiting to trip me up. I have yet to take a serious fall, but that’s because, like any hunted animal, I have developed defense mechanisms.

First, I visually sweep the floor for shoes before I go to sleep and move them from doorways and top steps. This isn’t a foolproof defense. Sometimes I miss a shoe. And even during the day our house can be dark if the shades are closed. Shoes can be lying in wait. Fortunately, I have a second defense — I walk lightly. I trip sometimes, but I have yet to go down. I end up hopping and cursing, but I maintain my balance and don’t fly into a wall or down the stairs. When this happens, when I avert a header by the narrowest margin through some acrobatic feat, my wife laughs. She’s disappointed if I tell her about it — she wants to see it. “Do it again,” she’ll say. It seems that almost falling is funny, too.

I’ve asked her, pleaded with her, gotten angry with her, tried everything to get her not to leave shoes where I’m likely to trip over them. Nothing works.

“You should look where you’re walking,” she says.

I tell her, “You know, you think it’s funny, but one day, when I’m not so young and spry, I’m going to get killed by one of your shoes. I’m going to fall and break my neck. And you’re probably going to think it’s funny. Until you realize that I’m dead.”

Cue the laughter.