Whoosh...Thud!

Normally, when you leave your home in the morning, it's the part of the day with the least potential to be remarkable in any fashion. But sometimes, when you live in Minnesota, you leave the house and find out that it's winter. And then your perfectly dull little trip to the car/bus stop/coffeehouse is suddenly ripe with opportunity to pull you into the cosmic practical joke.

Normally, when ice builds up on sidewalks, it announces its presence by being nice and white. Or brown, if it's got road sand mixed in. But sometimes, when it falls as drizzle and then freezes in a very thin layer, it looks exactly like wet concrete. You can't even tell the difference when your eyes are, for example, six inches above it, after it's felled you like a gazelle on the Serengeti.

Normally, when you fall, you fall on your hands. But sometimes, when a thin sheen of ice is covered by a thin sheen of water, you fall so quickly you can't get your hands down. Then, if you're lucky, you land entirely on your posterior (if you're not lucky, you land on your teeth). Those are pretty much the only times you're actually glad you ate all those pizzas after your metabolism realized you weren't 18 anymore.