I have a friend who's naturally graceful. He rarely stumbles or bumps into things. One time he was standing on my porch steps smoking and shifted his weight wrong, causing him to slip off the step he was on. He just sort of let himself go and surfed down the stairs still holding the cigarette to his lips.

I think I'm a mix of both clumsy and graceful. One, when whacking the crap out of each other with shinai, MM whack my right hand, which was holding the bamboo sword, causing me to drop it to the ground.

Or, it would have hit the ground, had I not executed a perfect hackey-sack side kick to the butt of the falling sword, popping it back up and into the air, where I caught it with my other hand.

I could have possibly used the opportunity MM's gaping astonishment to beat the ever lovin' snot out of him, had I not been stunned into gaping astonishment myself.

I don't buy pants with cuffs anymore, after the unfortunate incident in which I broke my toe.

Congratulations to Raquel and her DH! Welcome to the world Mallory!

I'm extremely graceful as long as I'm not standing on two feet. Give me, a cane, or a staff, and have nice grace. If you take it away, prepare to start giggling at my pain.

So far I've managed to keep this year's New Year's resolution, which was to not fall on the ice and break a limb.

But I still think I need to learn how to fall properly.

But I still think I need to learn how to fall properly.

Probably so. But you want to practice on mats first, before you move up to ice.

But I still think I need to learn how to fall properly.

It's never too early to start. Just fling yourself at the ground a lot. Like right now.

The early days may bring a lot of expensive bills, but the payoff in training will be well worth it.

That's as annoying (well, I'm less gracious than I am graceful, for sure) as a friend of mine with lightning reflexes.

This would be your friend Wally?

We actually had a unit on falling in high school theatre. Trust exercises, where you fall straight back and trust the person/s to catch you, "fainting," or crumpling gracefully to the floor, pratfalls. It was a lot of help, on top of the childhood ballet, in being aware that I was falling enough to relax and roll with it.

I also took ballet in college. Our ballet instructor was a past premier danseur himself, and also taught in the school of dance. He came into class one Monday morning with a walking cast on his foot.

"I'm remodeling. I *knew* the paint cans were there, therefore I had no need to look where I was going. *sigh* Dancers are the clumsiest people on earth."

I did a trust exercise in high school once. They dropped me. Cured me of *that* impulse.

They replace our office carpet last week and glued down carpet tiles instead.

Through a miscommunication, instead of leaving the building open to outside air all weekend, they shut the air OFF all weekend. Fume city. Need I say that there are no user-operable controls?