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.