I got a huge dose of humility this week.

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I left the apartment feeling pretty good. I had my favorite cereal for breakfast, was wearing an outfit I liked and life in general was looking up. Until I had a classic “Megan moment.”

A “Megan moment” is something my friends and family like to call a klutzy incident that can only happen to me. I have no hand-eye coordination or depth perception, horrible night vision and am just clumsy in general, so usually “Megan moments” involve injury and embarrassment. I should be used to them by now, since I’ve had them my whole life, but crashing and burning is just not something you can get adjusted to.

After my normal morning, I headed down the stairs and to my car. Suddenly, without warning, I had a complete wipeout. My body met concrete hands first and I was flat out on the sidewalk.

“What the heck was that?” I said to myself, stunned. OK, let’s not kid ourselves. I didn’t say heck. But it really hurt!

I was not seriously injured. My palms took a hit, and were scraped up and I have a few bruises, but nothing big. Unfortunately, my phone and glasses did not fare as well. In my usual rush to get out the door, I just grabbed both in my hand, intending to throw them in my bag when I got to the car. Well, I didn’t make it there. My phone screen now has a big scratch on the face, and my glasses? Well, let’s just say I could pretend to be Harry Potter now. Yes, that’s right, they broke right in the middle under the weight of my hand.

The most humiliating part was the fact that I couldn’t find anything that I could have possibly tripped over. No big tree limbs, no animals underfoot, no huge cracks, absolutely nothing. For times like these, my family and I blame what we like to call “air rocks.” There’s nothing visible, but I know there was a vanishing piece of granite, just waiting to trip me up and disappear.

I’m going to look into getting my optometrist to install X-ray lenses on my new glasses. That way I can spy an “air rock” and laugh at its feeble attempts to face plant me.

In the meantime, I’m going to get knee and elbow pads because wiping out is really painful and I need to be prepared for the next “Megan moment.”

E-mail reporter Megan Sprague at .

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