2004-09-03 - 3:20 AM

Today, sitting in a lecture hall, in those fold-down movie-theater style seats. An hour and a half in, 15 minutes from the end of class, prof is handing out quizzes for us to take. I slump in my chair, or try to. Actually I slide down and forward, hear a snapping sound, and a crash as the bottom of the chair slams into the concrete floor. Damn thing broke and dropped me like a brick.

She stops handing out quizzes, and a hundred and thirteen pairs of eyes are on me. You could hear a pin drop. Fellow students, I suppose, wondered if this was where I looked embarrassed and sat in the next chair over, or came up with some quip, some casually clever and immediately suave thing to say with a grin to elicit laughter and display my charm, or whatever. As utterly confused as they were, I looked the professor right in the eye, across the massive hall, and shrugged, raising an elbow and helplessly scratching the back of my head. With a slightly embarrassed smile, I broke the silence, through which still reverberated the echo of my ass attacking raw concrete via stainless steel framing below a cheap cushion.

"I... uhr... didn't do it?"
"He's telling the truth," she laughed, addressing the whole class, also laughing (apparently it was quippy enough). "I saw him. He didn't actually do anything."

And yet, I managed to fall on my ass. It's just been one of those days.

I can't even begin to describe the how and why of the rest of it without fingering a small percentage of people who read this thing and will thus blow it out of proportion, but all I wanted to do today was slump down in my chair and let the world stroll by. And you, you, and you... You had to go and be my broken seats.

-Alex

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