Head Over Heels

In my junior year at Jordan High School I trained myself to be a yell leader - a male cheerleader. We were supposed to do acrobatics and gymnastics, but I had never had any training. So I practiced by jumping off inner tubes. Trying to do back flips meant landing on my head several times. There never seemed to be any damage, except I felt the strange desire after that to write radio episodes.

I've even fallen backward down stairs in front of an entire cast of one of my musicals. Backing up on the stage one foot too far, I tumbled backwards doing a reverse somersault and then quickly jumping to my feet and proclaiming, "I'm all right!" Then we went back to rehearsing.

Trying to combine both of these events into one disaster, I took the cast to the stage during an intermission of a Shakespeare production. One of my students did a back flip on the stage and I confidently proclaimed, "I can do that!" Taking off my glasses and removing my cell phone from my belt (don't want those things to get damaged!), I ran and did my round-off into a back handspring. Failing to gain much height and having little muscle tone anymore, my head made it all the way around from the floor to the floor. My face thumped first onto the stage, followed by my crumpling body. I had actually hit my right cheekbone first - and in front of all the students. I slowly stood and put my hand to my cheek, which immediately began swelling up.

I declared "Intermission's over," and we went back to the performance. I was running the lights and stopped on the way to buy a cold drink in an aluminum can. The swelling on my cheekbone was now the size of a golf ball, but rolling the cold aluminum can on the swollen flesh seemed to help. I left later that night looking like Quasimodo's brother.

I've had other incidents at my high school which involve inflicting pain on others. I seem to have a charmed life when it comes to injuries, and so at times I'm not as careful as I should be.

Scott was helping me in my Technical Theatre class. We were trying to staple a side curtain up as a leg to block sightlines backstage. Up on the ladder I was confidently stapling away 17 feet off the ground, as most of the students have enough brains to be afraid of heights.

I have even had my technical theatre classes raise me up the entire 40 feet to the top of the fly system so I could replace lights on the ceiling. I don't know what I would have done if they had decided not to let me back down.

But on this day Scott was attentively waiting for the stapler. I decided to toss it down to him so he could take it to the other side of the stage for use there. As Scott was looking up I told him to get ready for the stapler. He was looking right at me, and so I tossed it down.

This was a Stanley Stapler, the solid metal kind which must have reached terminal velocity by the time it reached him. He chose at this particular moment to be distracted by one of his classmates, and as he looked away at them, the stapler hit him right on top of his head and made a huge gash.

I hurried down the ladder and we went to the office and filed an accident report. I haven't thrown down a stapler since. Scott went off to the hospital to have stitches put in his head, and I resolved not to endanger any other students just because I seem to have a charmed existence. I am a danger to other people.

I’m also dangerous to my own cars. Once when I had a television repaired for three hundred dollars, I plopped it down on the front seat and didn’t think what would happen with a quick stop -- which cracked the windshield -- which added another one hundred dollars to the repair bill.

When that same television went on the fritz again later, I drove it to the local charity and dumped it off.

Imagine my surprise, after I had bought a new television for several hundred dollars, when I went to the shop at the charity store and saw my old television back in working order and priced at only one hundred dollars.

It made me want to bash my windshield. But I had already learned that lesson.

Learning is one of the greatest things about getting to live longer. I can’t wait to find out what I will be blessed to learn next.

LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text

The Complete Collection of

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping

Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin

Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this episode.