Shown the Door

Amelia's family threw quite the happening party after graduation. Her relatives were very generous in hosting an event at their house and providing delicious food for many of our friends and friends' families. I was very grateful for their hospitality and had every intention of being extremely respectful, I swear.

It was dusk, that funny, cloudy stage between light and dark. A very tardy Joan called my cell phone and said she was at the door. Eager to greet her, while still on the phone, I sprinted from a corner of the yard to the open sliding glass backdoor. The problem, however, was that the screen door was not open and - blame it on my speed, my vision impaired by dusk, my excitement to see Joan, or even my stupidity - I ran smack into the screen door at pretty much full force. Immediately, I bounced off the material and was sent flying backwards, landing on my back.

Shocked, embarrassed, and laughing, I lay on the ground trying to regain my composure. Instantaneously, Amelia's older relatives, strangers to me, swarmed around me to see that I was okay. I had trouble balancing my laughter and apologizing while trying to alleviate the concern of these senior citizens. In the distance, I spotted my friends, many of whom witnessed the entire scene, positively cracking up. Sometimes I wish I could be on the other side of things and just enjoy these types of incidents. Though I had only had one glass of wine, I'm sure everyone thought I was a drunken idiot and not merely the perpetual idiot that I am.

Apparently, like a true klutz, I managed to tear the screen at the top, meaning my goal of leaving without any permanent damage went unfulfilled. Also, I momentarily forget I had been mid-sentence on the phone with Joan when the collision occurred. Though she heard some kind of commotion, when I stopped responding, she hung up on me. To make all of this more embarrassing and irrelevant, evidently, I had misheard Joan: she wasn't at the door, she was just leaving the door, and didn't arrive for another twenty minutes.

Happy graduation!