What Am I Doing Lying On The Ground?

We have a new activity at the office this summer.

Every day at around 3:30 in the afternoon a bunch of us take our breaks at the same time so we can run out to the parking lot and throw a baseball around for 15 minutes.

We must look a little weird tossing a ball in our office wear, because everybody tends to stare as they drive by.

We have improved considerably since the beginning of the year. In fact we only end up chasing the ball down the block 4 or 5 times per round.

Our parking lot is enclosed by a low wooden fence that is maybe 2.5 to 3 feet high. Being the great athlete that I am, when I have a pass ball I run after it and nimbly jump over the little fence as if it was a hurdle. Not even a break in my stride. I must look like a young buck of 20 years or so.

The other day I was doing just that when something went terribly wrong. There I was in mid-leap when all of a sudden I was overcome by a sudden wave of stupidity. For some reason I changed my mind and decided that I was going to step on top of the fence instead of just jumping over it altogether. In retrospect this was a bad decision.

I'm not entirely sure, because it is all just a blur to me, but this is what I think happened:

Since I was already airborne when I changed my mind, I already had far too much height to make stepping on the fence possible. My brain, however, was dead set in me stepping on that fence and in the attempt to set my foot down I ended up tripping over it instead and came crashing down on the pavement on the other side. The trip didn't end there though. About four feet on the other side of the fence there is a three foot ledge that drops down onto another parking lot. As I continued my fall I had just enough forward momentum to cause me to topple over the next ledge as well, depositing my body into the parking lot next door like a bag a old laundry.

As soon as I came to a complete stop I quickly jumped up and looked around to find out how many people saw my act of klutziness. I didn't see anybody laughing their asses off, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. I came out of it with nothing more that a scraped knee and a hell of a barked shin, not to mention my more than slightly damaged pride. That maneuver probably looked exactly like a 35 year old trying to jump over a fence as if he thought he was a 20 year old buck.

As embarrassing as it was, I wish we could have caught that moment on tape. I would have liked to have seen that spectacular crash.