Falling...Head over Heels

Literally.
I used to find great amusement in the simplest of things, like the slapstick classic where a person slips on a banana peel. That always just cracked me up, and the more dignified the fall-ee, the better.

That is, of course, until it happened to me.

Last term, I had a similar incident, where I fell no less than three times when getting my car open (door freezes shut) and then the windshield cleared--but that I could understand and anticipate at least a bit, for I was engaged in wild gyrations on an obviously icy surface.

However, yesterday I was leaving my workplace and took a hard fall not ten steps outside the building--yesterday it was not even all-that iced over outside. It looked like a little drizzle, but it was treacherously slick! Upon getting up, I fell again in two steps, hard. I had to crawl part of the way to my vehicle.

What's so funny?
Makes me think (not about litigation, except when I move and it hurts). I guess it seemed funny before when people would fall for they were doing something out-of-the-ordinary, surprising (at least to the fall-ee). Maybe the humor was in the sudden loss of dignity, the pulling-the-rug out from under someone? I don't know much about the theory of humor, but I do know that sudden incongruity plays its part. I would bet my airborne antics were pretty funny, too, as physical humor goes. Now that I have been subject to such a fall, however, I don't know if I will find it so very funny when I next witness it. I do, however, find it highly amusing when someone trips on a crack, falls indecorously, then gets up to examine the crack in an exaggerated way to call attention to the crack, as if to say to all the world, "Ah-ha, that's the culprit, I am NOT a klutz." I suppose I will always find that face-saving silliness to be funny.

I am not bitter about it, and I'm not defending myself. After all, no one witnessed it but my wife and son. Admittedly, I was ignorant in this instance, totally blind-sided by the ice. I should have known better, I guess, somehow. I am not blaming the ice nor the workplace; it was my fault. For those who do not know me, I walk with an ostrich-like gait, bobbing, big/quick steps something like a pigeon, I'm told. That is an unwise walk on ice, let me tell you!

It brings up a question. Since it was funny until it happened to me, does that suggest that the more such things happen to me, the less I will find life to be funny?