Title: Such Sweet Sorrow
Author: Anna-Maria
Rating: PG
Summary: "I have, however, fallen down an assortment of other stairs. I've also fallen up quite a few and given the choice I'd fall up rather than down every time"
A/N: This is Grissom's POV
There was once a friend of mine who, on having his amorous advances rejected, stole the stairs from the house in which the object of his desires was resident.
You might wonder as to how one would achieve this and it's not as difficult as it sounds. You simply get the tow rope that you always carry in the boot and tie one end to the steps and the other to your car.
You then rev the engine, drop the clutch and accelerate up the street at full throttle. One of three things will then occur. The steps will remain in place and the bumper bar will be ripped off your car, the rope will snap or the steps will follow you down the street.
In the case of my friend, the rope and the bumper bar held and the stairs lost. This did little to endear him to the woman in question but it was generally agreed among his mates that he had made his point.
I've never stolen stairs but for the past four years I've lived in a house with an internal staircase. In spite of a long and inglorious record of down-falling, not once did I tumble down the stairs as predicted by so many of my acquaintances, which is more than can be said for my wife.
I still recall the Bump! Bump! Bump! Bump! Thump! which signalled her descent, a journey which ended with a second's silence followed by the loud utterance of a single expletive.
I have, however, fallen down an assortment of other stairs. I've also fallen up quite a few and given the choice I'd fall up rather than down every time.
These musings were triggered last week by news of my wife let's call her Catherine as that's her name with whom I share certain characteristics.
We have both over the past 20 years shown a propensity for misfortune.
There was that time, for example, when Catherine parked her car in a street outside a large building. Minutes later, a window detached itself from the building and falling from a great height, trashed her car.
Never before and never since has a window fallen from this building but once Catherine had parked there, the laws of inevitability took hold.
Her employment career also has been blighted three of her employers going bankrupt in succession.
After the first two had slipped beneath the fiscal waves, she joined a large American corporation.
"This will be a challenge for you, Catherine," I said. "Not even your legendary misfortune could conspire to bring down a company of its size."
A few weeks later, the company crashed in flames and Catherine was back on the employment scrapheap.
All this has now changed and she is gainfully employed . . . and so to last week when, after a hard day of toil at her present place of work, she put her feet up and enjoyed a glass of chards.
Frayed nerve ends soothed by the soporific effects of the chards, Catherine then decided that it would be a great and a good thing to hang out the washing.
Gathering up her smalls from the washing machine, she bundled them into a basket and headed downstairs to the clothesline.
Catherine and I also share a tendency to absentmindedness and she is apt to forget developments which would remain in the forefront of the consciousness of others.
And so it came to pass that when she stepped off her veranda to descend the stairs to the clothesline, she forgot that the house renovators had removed the steps several days previously, having judged them to be in such a state of disrepair as to be potentially hazardous to her health.
She had, by now, put down the glass of chardonnay and was clutching a laundry basket with both hands as she stepped out into space.
Estimates of the distance she fell vary, five metres being the most commonly agreed figure.
Her luck, however, changed in mid-flight and somehow, halfway between the veranda and the unforgiving yard below, the basket lodged beneath her bum. Whap! Catherine crash landed on the lawn squarely in her basket of clothes before bouncing out and sprawling on the ground.
She now sports an impressive bruise on her rear and assorted cuts and abrasions and has given up washing until the new stairs are installed.
Since then we have got married and have moved into a new house with our daughter Lindsey.
The house which boasts not a single step, which has meant a quiet life, if you don't count the electric fan, vacuum cleaner and three chairs that I have accidentally destroyed since moving in . . . and the lawnmower I ran over last week.
Fortunately, no one was pushing it at the time.
THE END!