| Image via FriendBurst. (It's surprisingly difficult to find an image like this. What in the world do you search for?) |
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For as often as cartoon characters fall through ceilings, it’s fairly uncommon in real life (same with bomb-swallowing and anvil-induced head trauma). You, however, are about to read the account of a survivor of such a fall. Allow me to set the scene: *cleaning reading glasses* It was 1999, if memory serves, and I was hunting wabbits with my twusty rifuhw in a gween fowest glade... No, that’s not right; it was Chris Henderson’s house, with some friends on a Saturday morning. We’d all drunk deep from that slumber party cocktail of sleep deprivation, boredom and mischief, and it was decided that the Henderson attic was owed some exploring (and why shouldn’t it?). Guided by approximately 1.5 flashlights per three explorers, we rummaged through the Henderson’s disappointingly ordinary storage boxes. I’m not sure what we sought— doubloons, treasure maps, cadavers? — but whatever it was, it either didn’t exist, or it did, but we never pushed that one false brick that triggers the sliding wall that reveals its secret hiding place. Defeated, we made our way to the attic entrance, a funny little half-door that led back into the Henderson’s walk-in closet — a mundane Narnia, if you will. At this point, I had a confident lay of the land, and recklessly hopped from joist to joist. You can see where this is going. Chris, who held my sole source of illumination, turned around to inspect one last box. But the door was just 10 feet away, so I forged ahead in darkness. Suddenly, a big patch of light appeared beneath my feet. Shortly thereafter, a stack of paint cans also appeared beneath my feet, the suddenness of which cannot be overstated. It wasn’t until I looked upward, lying on the cold concrete amid bits of drywall and insulation, and saw the gaping black hole in the middle of the ceiling, that I realized the floor had not in fact been thrust upward to join me in the attic. The attic and garage were still in their respective locations, and it was I that had undergone the dramatic repositioning. There wasn’t much pain, but there was plenty of panic, because my lungs didn’t seem to be functioning. After a breathless eternity in the garage, where I feared I would die alone, then get shelved next to the Halloween costumes, Chris burst through the door. As he assessed the situation, I wondered what became of the rest of the search party. Did they not care that one of their own had plunged to his death? Chris answered my question when he disappeared back into the house; a few seconds later I heard his muffled shout: “He’s up here, you idiots!” It appears my comrades, having seen a few too many Looney Tunes, were searching for my remains in the house basement. They knew my descent had begun in the attic, but likely figured the spread-eagle, Matt-shaped hole continued downward through each successive floor down to the house foundation, upon which my teeth were probably now making xylophone sounds as they tinkled onto it from my mouth. I made a full recovery (no broken bones, but I did get giant bruises on my triceps as they hit the rafters on the way down), but it pains me to say that my friends suffered some significant brain damage that day, and their intelligence still remains day-to-day. |
