Help, I’ve Fallen And I Laughed It Off!

There was one time during the summer I was at my mother’s house for the weekend to spend time with her and my sister. This was when my mother still lived in Maine. It was getting late so my sister and I started to get ready to go to sleep. It was almost ten o’clock and my mother and step-father were fast asleep already. Their bedroom was the only place that my sister and I could access the ladder to get to my sister’s “bedroom”. My sister’s “bedroom” was actually a loft. The only way to get up into the loft was to climb up a ladder, cross over a hole in the floor and shimmy ourselves from the ladder to the floor. My room was not completely set up yet because there was no insulation. My room was on the other side of my mother’s room. It also used to be a storage closet that is why there was no insulation. While my room was being fixed I had to sleep in the living room on the couch. On this particular night, I did not want to sleep on the couch again because it was uncomfortable and cold because it was right next to the door, so I asked my sister Elexis, “Can I sleep in the loft with you tonight, Lexi? The couch hurts my back and I get really cold” she replied to me hesitantly saying yes. We got our pajamas on and grabbed our water bottles. We tip-toed through the bathroom into and into our mother’s room. We were trying to be quiet because most of the time if we woke our mother up she was extremely angry at us and would yell at us that we were grounded. While climbing the ladder we had to be extremely quiet because it was right next to our mother’s bed.

My sister climbed up the ladder first. She crossed over the hole in the floor to get to the other side where her bed was placed. It was my turn to go up the ladder next. I climbed the ladder as slowly and as quietly as I could so I would not wake up my mother and step-father. When I got to the top of the ladder I had to cross over the hole. Doing this always made me scared because I was afraid that I would fall through the hole. I reached for the floor and I missed it. I then fell through the hole, my body landed halfway off of two cupboards that I had landed on and then I hit the ground with a very loud THUD that shook the whole house. It all happened so fast that I did not even realize that it had actually happened. I was in a complete daze because I was so confused, shocked, and scared. I was looking around to see if anyone had noticed or heard. This is when my mother woke up startled because of the noise and yelled: “What the HELL is going on?!” She looked down at the floor and saw that I was there, laughing hysterically, even after I had just fallen down an eight-foot-tall ladder. My mom sprang out of bed and plucked me off the floor delicately as if I was a flower. After my mom picked me up my sister climbed down the ladder, hugged me, and they both kept asking me if I was okay. I told them I was fine while laughing. I never went up in the loft again.

Sometimes laughter is the only way to keep people from crying. It can also help people so they will not be scared in some situations. It is a reaction the body has when an immense amount of sadness or fear is in a person’s body. Laughter, in most bad situations, helps to lighten the mood of yourself and others. Laughter helps people feel like there is nothing bad happening. In my case, it helped me from breaking down and crying after I fell because I was scared and confused. It helped me not only to not cry but it also helped me to make it so my mother and sister would not think that I was hurt, even though my back hurt really bad, and I did not want my mother to get mad.

Photo by Lucinda Lovering on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND