Thursday, October 27, 2005

The Perfect Storm

Today on the street, I was at a stoplight as a stout woman approached carrying five pizzas. Her heel caught in the sidewalk, and she began to teeter. Her inability to regain balance led the pizzas to fall to the sidewalk. She followed suit by lurching onto the pizzas, rolling to her side, and flailed her arms like a turtle placed on its shell. The slow developing sequence took @ 30 seconds.

Oddly, an event that normally would leave me in stitches barely registered. I am convinced the components of the sequence all reached my laughing reflex at the same time, causing a bottleneck that prevented me from uttering a chuckle. The confluence of events rendered me without an emotive response.

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