I Fell In an Open Manhole and All I Got Out Of It Was This Lousy Blog Post

A few days ago I was having a shitty day, even by pandemic standards. It was one of those days where it feels like the universe itself is against you. It was one of those days where it feels like you will never get ahead no matter how hard you try or how much integrity or talent you might have. It was one of those hopeless days where it feels like you can’t win.

It was one of those days, my friend. 

I was walking across a bridge, feeling frustrated and angry and overwhelmed, not really paying attention to the world around me or anything other than the podcast I was listening to. 

Then it happened. 

I fell. Hard. But I fell in a way that I had never fallen before. I didn’t trip. I didn’t stumble. Instead I experienced the bizarre and deeply sensation of my right leg and elbow unexpectedly plunging into a small, agonizing abyss. 

Then I looked down and saw what had happened. 

I had fallen into an open manhole. 

Seriously. 

Like a goddamn character in a silent short or a bumbling oaf I had fallen into a manhole. Thankfully this manhole was not particularly deep. It was three or four feet or so at most of garbage and leaves and random debris that scraped up my leg and arm something awful. 

The manhole was not completely open or I might have fallen through it with my whole body, or at least my lower half. Instead, part of the manhole cover was loose and when I stepped on it without looking I must have knocked it over enough to make room for the entire right side of my body. 

It was truly the maraschino cherry atop what was already a triple scoop sundae of a lousy day. In the fall I had cracked the screen of the iPhone that I was holding. It wasn’t broken but it was pretty dented up. 

I was angry. Very angry. “Fuck!” I yelled to the heavens, followed by, “Seriously? A fucking manhole? I fell in an open manhole? That’s something that actually happens in the real world, and not just in old Warner Brothers cartoons?” 

In the distance I saw cop lights flashing and a cat that had been absolutely demolished in a brutal car crash. All of this happened at about two in the afternoon on a Wednesday. It was as if a witch was flying over this unremarkable stretch of highway in residential Chamblee Tucker and decided to fuck with random people for pure spite. 

Once the pain and the shock subsided I was able to see the humor in the situation. I had fallen into a manhole! How utterly ridiculous! How absurd! How preposterous! How unlikely! 

It was like slipping on a banana peel, or having a piano or anvil fall on you as you went about your daily business, but not as deadly as having something weighing hundreds of pounds fall on you from a great height. 

But it was, on some level, funny. Even hilarious. I shared my experience on Facebook because I wanted other people to both empathize with my pain and derive amusement from my accidentally comic hijinks, no matter how painful it might have been at the time. 

I’ll be a lot more careful around manholes in the future. Hell, I will pay more attention to the world around me and try not to be comically oblivious. 

Because I know now that manhole-themed accidents exist outside the world of cartoons and slapstick. If it happened to me it could happen to you, and I can vouch that falling in an open manhole is jarring and shocking and painful but also more than a little hilarious. 

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