The Ubiquitous Pratfall

pratfall a humiliating mishap or blunder or a fall on the buttocks
ubiquitous existing or being everywhere at the same time; widespread

Charles Schulz, in his comic strip Peanuts, made good use of the pratfall. The most well known involves Lucy, a football, and Charley Brown, in which Lucy promises to hold the football so that Charley can kick it. At the last second, she jerks it away, Charley kicks thin air and suffers a pratfall. It became a recurrent theme.

In one episode of the animated feature Arthur, a children's program on PBS, Arthur makes an error in judgement and is shown with an egg splattered on his face - another type of pratfall.

All of us have blundered in one way or another, been embarrassed, got the wrong idea, had humiliating experiences, and, mostly, we prefer not to discuss them! Or even to own up to them. In families and among friends these sometimes become anecdotes repeated as comic events. I leave it to the reader to recall them.

The pratfall has been around for at least 17,000 years. Prehistoric cave paintings discovered in Lascaux, France, may give us an example. The paintings done by cavemen artists depict animals existing and hunted at the time. The hunters are merely primitive stick figures, but there is one realistic adult handprint. Did the artist, hands covered with paint and working bent over, straighten up and to brace himself, leave his handprint on the wall with no way to erase it? Art historians have various views, but some art students feel it was an early pratfall.

Explaining the Inexplicable

inexplicable incapable of being explained, interpreted, or accounted for

Physicists have been seeking a Theory of Everything (TOE). Their searches have gone far beyond anything Einstein contemplated about the forces in our universe, or that he was willing to accept. One of the latest candidates for TOE is string theory, which deals wth the invisible and intricate - and no matter how many times it is studied, it leaves this layman befuddled. One is supposed to accept that there are many more dimensions in space than the three - height, breadth, depth - which are familiar concepts. It is said there are nine dimensions and one of time. The strings are coiled and vibrating within, or are, subatomic particles.

An unlikely source of wisdom put it thus: imagine a table upon which there is a magazine that explains everything known about our universe. An ant is crawling along the floor beneath that table. Consider what the ant knows of the content of the magazine. We are like that ant.

March 1: The Second Verse

Now that the month of love, February, is past, it is time for the second verse of the lovely poem Fate by Susan Marr Spalding, to appear. The first verse can be read in the February 6, 2006 post titled Found: A Love Song for February.

And two shall walk some narrow way of life
So nearly side by side, that should one turn
Ever so little space to left or right
They needs must stand acknowledged face to face.
And yet with wistful eyes that never meet,
With groping hands that never clasp, and lips
Calling in vain to ears that never hear,
They seek each other all their weary days
And die unsatisfied--and this is Fate.