When I was a child, I would hold my arms straight out from my sides and spin around and around until I fell down. I would sit on the floor and giggle until I could stand up. Then, I would spin myself dizzy again.

My grandparents lived in Natchez Trace Park. Their side yard was a hill so steep that a ball would have no choice but to roll and roll until it reached the bottom that waited like a tiny green pool of sweet, soft grass. I loved to stretch out in the grass at the top of that hill and roll like that ball until I splashed in the patch of flat grass. Before I paused long enough to be sitting, I would jump to my feet and run to the top of the hill to roll down it again.

Many, many calendars later, I sporadically sit down on a stool in my kitchen and scribble something down on a scrap of Internet here or there. Sometimes I settle in and read an interesting article or crop the edges off of a digital photograph. When I am done entertaining myself, I bounce to my feet to head toward the kitchen sink or washing machine. It is at the exact moment when I attempt a step that I feel myself crumbling, collapsing, falling toward the ground. The exhaustive task of sitting causes one or both of my legs to become giant sticks of pudding with tingles, or as Evan calls them, sparkles that cannot be used or controlled.

Depending on the angle of my fall, the entire weight of my body crushes down on my knees or my palms and wrists. The puddle of what was once me loiters on the floor, waiting for the numbness to become needles of ice, then functional legs. Even then, I sit on the floor and mentally abuse myself before I sheepishly get up and limp back into my routine.

Falling down used to be fun. Now, it’s just a broken bone roulette wheel.