I forget which day of the week it was, but Dean and I were behind the counter. It was a sunny day and the store wasn't too busy. A man on crutches entered the store and was browsing the aisles, we didn't really pay him much heed. Finally after a while he had collected three or four movies and he had them under his arm and was making his way to the counter, towards me actually. He stopped and took the tapes from under his arm and placed them on the counter...and that's when it happened.
His crutches kind of leaned back and he started to lose his balance. His whole body now was falling away from the counter. As he desperately and futilely tried to grab the counter to stabilize himself he left out a desperate sound.
"Woah, Woah, Woah!!" He bellowed and he swung his arms wildly in circles in a last ditch effort to get his balance.
He went crashing to the ground and landed with a loud thud, his crutches crashing to either side of him. It was like watching a tree falling in the forest. He just disappeared behind the counter like a lumberjack had chopped him down. All this seemed to happen in slow motion yet I was frozen, unable to help him in any way.
His wife had been walking into the store at that moment and freaked out.
"OH MY GOD! RICHARD!!" She screamed as she rushed through the doors to help him. Dean, being slightly more caring than I, attempted to hold in his laughter as he went to assist the poor guy.
"Are you ok sir?"
"Don't help me, I'm fine, don't help me"
The man was obviously embarrassed and was trying to get himself up by leaning on the soda cooler. It really was a pathetic sight. All I could manage to do was duck my head so he and his wife couldn't see me laughing.
Finally getting back to his feet, he managed to steady himself and I checked him out and he was on his way. The memory of what happened, his pathetic sounds, his flailing arms, the whole scene will forever be ingrained in my head though. I don't know what it says about me that I still find this one of the funniest Academy stories I've ever been apart of.
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