Biff

I’m not a nice person. Oh, sure, I put on a façade of nice-itude. I’ll compliment your tie at work. I’ll pick up the broken beer bottles thrown into Grover’s church yard. Heck, I’ll even smile at the scowling, angry commuters who try to kill me when I’m on my bike. But all of that is simply to hide a dark, evil secret:

I love watching Elijah fall down.

I think it’s because Eli runs with such…gusto. He doesn’t walk anywhere. He runs. Full bore. So when he biffs, he biffs full bore. Arms flail. Sippie cups rocket across the room. Legs splay.

It just kills me every time.

And no, I don’t laugh out loud. For one reason, it would probably cause him emotional distress that would manifest itself at some later date. Possibly at a wedding. Or when I need to be put in an old folks home. And also because if I laugh at him he may start to be more careful and not fall down as much. But there have been many a time when he’s bounced off the couch that I’ve had to cover my mouth to keep from bleating like a drunk sheep.

Well, all my secret pleasure at his falling came to a head last Saturday.

Diana was in the bath and Eli was bugging her, so I called him into the living room. As usual, he ran at me a full steam. Yes. Deep in my head I was thinking, “Come on. You can biff. You can do it. Biff! Biff!”

But then he biffed. Hard. So fast he couldn’t get his hands up to break his fall. So his face broke his fall. Blood. Fat lip. Screaming. Oh, the screaming.

He was so hurt he didn’t stop screaming for a good half hour. And no amount of popsicle could stop his hurting. I felt terrible for making him fall with my apparent mind powers.

So now I can’t love watching him fall down anymore. The pain outweighs the pleasure. Maybe I can derive pleasure from him getting his fingers stuck in Chinese finger traps. I’ll have to ride my bike to Chinatown.