A Performance as Experimentation

For this walking excercise, I decided that I would elaborate something that generally happens in my everday life. I have a tendency to trip. I don't usually fall all the way over, but if I don't trip once a day it's a miracle. I saw an episode of a show that introduced the concept of "surprise trust falls." In high school, I participated in a Ropes Course, an event that tried to build team work among each grade of the High School through team building excercises. One of which was a "trust fall", when you turn your back to a crowd, cross your arms over your chest and fall backward in the belief that the people behind you will catch you. "Surprise trust falls" have basically the same premise other than the people behind you knowing that they are participating in the excercise.

I decided it would be interesting to do something similar. Nearly all the people who hang out with me know that I am a tripper, but I decided that I would come closer to falling than I usually would in hopes that I could be caught after performing my "surprise trust fall." To my extreme delight, I only fell all the way down once. Most of the people around me began to wonder if I was drunk, due to my extreme lack of balance and general poor walking capabilities. At first, they seemed to be caught off gaurd that I had actually fallen, but after the first time they seemed prepared to catch me.

I did this at home and around town for a few hours, and the only people who seemed to be concerned for my well being were strangers. I thought that it was very funny that my friends, roommates, and boyfriend all seemed to think that it was completely normal that I didn't seem to be able to walk more than more than 100 yards without falling over or almost falling over. It showed me that it seems nearly impossible to phase the people I spend most of my time with unless I do something completely outrageous.