Close Misses and Short-Term Memory

I was running late this morning to get out of my house and make it to work on time - which is really no different than most mornings.

I quickly ran up my deathtrap stairs from the basement, saying my daily prayer that the stairs wouldn't give out and collapse like they creakingly threatened to with each step.

I swung open the door to the main floor and went to pull the door back as I passed through, when I realized the door knob I had gone to grab for was no longer connected to the door.

In the split second I had to register the fact that a heavy metal object was quickly falling to the ground where I stood, I lifted my right foot out of the way of the potential bone-crackingly dense knob, and then heard it crash hard onto the hard tile floor, 4cm to the left of my left foot.

I've learned that in situations that cause panic, my instincts are rather poor.

Why I lifted my protected right foot instead of the left foot that stood in the potential path of the object of terror is beyond me. It's about as baffling as my reaction to close my eyes to dull the clang of the knob on the tile. Honestly, I make no sense sometimes most times.

I've also learned that I don't like living in a half-broken house. One day I'll live in a fully-functioning, well-built home. And I won't appreciate it as much as I should, but I will certainly appreciate it more than other places I've lived in my life.

I shouldn't complain too much though. I do have a newly remodeled, (perpetually) almost completed kitchen, and a cute little neighborhood with a scruffy neighborhood cat I just met tonight.

And anything, anything is better than Beehive Manor, my first apartment in College - but how can you get worse than a place where one roommate moves out early because she's been placed in a mental facility, and the bathroom ceiling caves in and fills up your bathtub with insulation and ceiling particles...and then doesn't get cleaned up for 2 months? Among other problems this place had.

So while I wanted to curse at the door knob as it rolled around pathetically on the floor, instead I picked it up, expressing thanks that it didn't take my foot out when it landed, and then ran out the door, promptly forgetting all about the annoyance I had felt 30 seconds before.

That is, until I came home and found the knob laying around on the counter. Then I let my roommates know all about it. And then Roommate Melissa fixed it, and once again, we moved on.

Thank goodness for close misses and poor short-term memory.