At Least He Caught the Chips
At Least He Caught the Chips
by Roger Valdez
Unfortunately, I've witnessed firsthand, one too many times, when Andre inadvertently ruins someone's day. There was this one time in which Andre and I went to eat breakfast at a local diner, and when our waitress was about to come to our table with our food, Andre decided he wanted to go to the bathroom before we ate. I can only visually remember it, as if the whole situation was recorded in my mind in slow motion. As he stood up to go to the bathroom, I looked down at his shoes for no real reason, and I saw a frantic white shoelace throwing itself around as if it were a waving flag. Andre’s next few steps were a little worrying, but not a big enough reason to yell at him across two tables that his shoelaces were untied. The waitress used her left hand to balance our plates of food on a big round metal tray held high above her head, and held a big glass jug of orange juice in her right.
I stayed focused on Andre's feet each time they took a step, almost as if I was watching a televised event about the crazy accomplishments that humans are able to do. Step number 12 was to go in the record books as one of the world's worst steps man has ever taken, or at least one that Andre has ever taken. As Andre was about to take step 12, I thought back to the time that I saw his frantic white shoelace throwing itself around like a flag, and realized it was a message of sorts, as if that shoelace was telling me that it was surrendering itself from its sole duty of being a piece of string that prevents your shoes from falling off. Andre’s left foot stepped on the “surrendered” shoelace, and all hell broke loose, the momentum of Andre tripping caused him to do what resembles a “blindside” hit in football towards our waiter, a penalty of 15 yards…
The orange juice flew out to soak a couple a few tables down from ours, and our food ended up on a man's plate sitting right next to the (now drenched) couple. Andre himself suffered a season-ending injury of embarrassment and landed the team of Andre and me an indefinite suspension from that diner.
That wasn’t even the first time something like that happened to Andre. There was another time where I went over to a friend's house for a party, and, evidently, Andre was also there. An hour or so into his time there, Andre was hanging out by the pool and eating a bag of chips—nothing too bad so far in this story. But as Andre was coming over to talk to me from the other side of the pool, he dropped his bag of chips. All Andre had to do was to bend over and pick up his chips, but no, Andre is no normal person. Andre continued to try to kick his chips up from the floor as if he were a soccer player trying to volley their ball into the air to catch it. Andre leaned forward to catch his chips in mid air, but out of nowhere, his ankle gave, Andre’s body was flung into the pool and his ankle got sprained, but at the end, at least he caught the chips.