To sit and not faint

There is one thing I have never been able to understand. How is it that children can be sitting quietly on a chair when it seems that suddenly a gravitational anomaly grabs them and they are suddenly on the floor? Whump! One second they are on a chair, and the next they are on the floor in a heap?

I am not talking about kids who only have one cheek on the chair to begin with; nor am I talking about kids on unstable or broken chairs. I do not refer to kids on rolling office chairs----just ordinary four-legged chairs. I am not even talking about kids who have that leaning-back-on-the-chair syndrome which is otherwise known as deacon’s disease.

The fallen children think they are the victims of some sort of trickery, be it gravity, rubber chair legs or whatever, as well. They usually howl like they have been pushed from their chairs. I have seen at least one of them get up and kick the chair. I have also seen them look around for some supposed human culprit.

I am sorry, but I have been known to laugh right out loud and hard when it happens. The “fallen” get up and want to punish me if not the chair.

I don’t get how you fall off a chair. Do you momentarily fall asleep? Do you temporarily forget how to hold yourself upright?

Sometimes when my children who are now mothers and fathers complain about their kids falling off chairs, I explain to them about genetics and how they did it too. However, I never remember falling off a chair myself and neither does Mr. B., so either it is a case of spontaneous gene alteration or they are going to have to blame the other side of their families. But since all of those kids had at least one parent who was unsteady on their seat, they are going to have a hard time getting away with it. But if they are raising a generation of chair-floppers, they are not blaming me for that one.

I was listing toward the gene-alteration theory until just the other day when I witnessed one of my kids’ in-laws do the unthinkable. That’s right! The person in question fell off the bench!

I don’t think this person went to sleep; we were at a sporting event watching our mutual grandkids who seem to run better than they sit. Forgetting how to sit upright would be a little more plausible. My generation is at the age where we forget all kinds of things. Or perhaps the distraction index was a little too high.

So, again, I don’t quite get it, but the kids in that family haven’t got a chance because they have inherited chair-flopping from more than one source.

Before you start counting up my kids and deciding who their in-laws are, I will make it easy for you. The person who lost her seating is a teacher who says her kindergartners fall off their chairs all the time.

Someone probably needs to get a research grant and spend some time and money studying the affliction of spontaneous unseating. Sooner or later someone is going to get hurt.