Smugly trying to look cool...
Arrived at the Odeon outside Coventry. Huge warehouse-style monstrosity of a multiplex with a big glass frontage. When you go in through the central glass doors, there's a box office desk about twenty yards away to your left... and another, identical desk the same distance away to your right. So my bestest friend and I walk in, and look left... bugger, there's a queue. A queue, it transpires, of unobservant dolts, because when we look to the right, SCORE! There's a rather nice young lady sitting there, just waiting to sell us some tickets. None of the dolts has noticed, so they're queueing like mugs. We, on the other hand, are now smug.

As is traditional, between us and the box office is one of those saggy thick velvet ropes designed to corral the queue into a space-saving zigzag. No need to walk around, oh no, I'm far too cool for that, and besides, the ropes barely four inches off the ground at its lowest point. Hands in pockets, I approach the rope, hop nimbly over it, and approach the nice young lady.

That's how it was supposed to go.

Hands in pockets, I approach the rope. I lead with my right foot, but my toes go UNDER the rope, not over it, lifting it. Thus, when my left foot leaves the ground, it also encounters the rope, and wraps round it. Now... if I was Buster Keaton, or Jackie Chan, I'd have tucked and rolled, and made a priceless moment of physical comedy look great.

I am not Buster Keaton. I am not Jackie Chan. I went down like a sack of shit. Hands in my pockets. Onto my FACE.

And I lay there for a bit. I thought about having a little cry. Then I got up. And I helped my bestest friend up off the floor. He hadn't tripped... he had literally fallen down laughing at me. He was still having difficulty breathing when we finally approached the nice young lady (whose face was a bit redder than I remembered) and bought our tickets.

On the up side, none of the unobservant dolts in the other queue noticed.
(SonofRojBlake, Thu 28 Nov 2013, 14:31, Reply)