BY JOELLEN COLLINS
Sometimes telling oft-repeated funny tales is an activity I have shared with a few friends who also like to reminisce about faux pas, embarrassing situations and unplanned things that make people laugh.
I learned the value of stifling my chagrin when I fell in unlikely places through my life, especially when young. I was always awkward, had asthma, and was too skinny for most displays of a graceful body. When I would go to Sorrento Beach in Santa Monica, Calif., with my friends, I would volunteer to carry their towels so I could cover my spindly legs and narrow hips. No more do I have to fear that!
Then, it seemed that whenever I was in the glare of the spotlight or attention from others, I would fall down.
At the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, I was waving at my buddies up in the mezzanine and fell flat on my face. When I joined my beautiful dancer friend in an assembly showing off the talents of our dance team – you guessed it – I slipped while she engineered a fancy leap.
At the first prom I chaperoned at the age of 22 at Santa Monica High, I was escorted by a very handsome young man, a friend of mine from UCLA, and while we were twirling to the looks of my students (I was sure they thought I was really cool), I caught my high heel in the hem of my dress and splattered to the dance floor.
Even when my husband and I would go to the theater, there were often disasters. One rainy night we were attending a performance at the Mark Taper Forum. I had my umbrella with me, and as I traversed the row, it snagged on an armrest and I couldn’t move further, to the laughter of many. My husband said, “Well, now I know what they mean when they say give her the hook” to get rid of a lousy performer!
I have learned to laugh these blunders off, and put my narcissism to the side, accepting that I am a klutz who often supplies the laugh on me that arises from my stumbles. I am working on my balance (a bit late, but I’m tired of slipping on winter ice) and have developed a repartee of whimsical, self-effacing responses to these minor disasters. I had a favorite doll when I was a little girl: her name was Joanne, and she survived years of getting wrinkled porcelain by my leaving her in the sun. One thing I always adored about her was that her head was the only solid piece of her body. She just bent into her trips down stairs or the jumps off my bed. When my younger daughter Tria was 3 and contemplating death (our hamsters, Bonnie and Clyde, pulled off another escape, this one final), she decided that she wanted to be a jacket, “because jackets never die.” Perhaps I should have been Raggedy Anne!