Apparently I Fall Now

Yesterday I had to work at our west campus and since my wife and kids were out of town I thought I’d get some Panda Express from their location on the west side near Purdue.  I love Panda Express and we eat there often – after this experience I hope they build a drive thru location on the east side of town close to where we live soon.

Things went well enough as I found a close parking spot on the street and went inside.  I always get the same thing at Panda, a 3-entre platter with brown fried rice, orange chicken, beef with broccoli and a third entre that is different each time – in other words, my usual. This time I sampled the potato chicken and it was rather tasty so I added it as my third entre.

She packed the order to go with the brown fried rice, potato chicken, and beef with broccoli in the white Styrofoam to go container and then put the orange chicken in a smaller take out box.  I paid my $8.75 and headed for the car.  This is where things turned ugly and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what happened.

As I crossed the street towards the sidewalk, I noticed a low hanging branch on a tree and thought to myself, “duck your head a little”.  The next thing I knew I was flying forward with my legs desperate to keep up with the top half of my body as I flew across the sidewalk towards a building.  In the split second this happened I realized I wasn’t going to gain control and I needed to stop fighting it and just roll into the fall.  Just like when your car is sliding on the ice, you don’t fight it, you steer into it.  Otherwise, I was going to plow into a building and I was pretty sure the building would win.

So I rolled into it and ended up sitting on the sidewalk with torn pants, a torn shirt, Chinese food everywhere, and a very sore right leg.  A group of students from India came up and before they laughed, asked me if I was ok and helped me up.  Stunned I looked around and tried to figure out what went wrong.  I didn’t find a hole in the ground or anything I could have tripped over and I’m pretty sure no one shoved me.  I was even sober at the time so how did I end up covered in Chinese food sitting on the sidewalk?

The only thing I can figure is that I ducked my head at the same time I stepped up onto the curb.  The shoes I was wearing don’t have much traction and my foot must have slipped off the curb and propelled my top half forward faster than my bottom half could keep up.  I’ve inquired as to if there is any surveillance camera footage of the area around 1pm yesterday and haven’t heard back yet.

I headed home with what food I had left to find that the only thing that survived was the orange chicken since it had been packed in its own box.  The white Styrofoam had opened and thrown the beef with broccoli and the potato chicken all over the sidewalk.  All that stayed in the bag was some brown fried rice, 1 floret of broccoli and 1 piece of chicken.  I dumped that out of the plastic bag onto a plate and had lunch, along with a dose of Ibuprofen.

Today, feeling bad for me, my wife went and got us Panda Express for dinner tonight however, to add insult to my stiff right leg’s injury, the potato chicken is only available at the west side location.  If someone wants to bring me some that’d be great.

Oh, and I tossed the shoes.  Not sure why, just seemed prudent.