Did I trip, have a fall, or simply fall?

How language can age us.

Last week, I tripped, went down on one knee, twisted my torso, and ended up in excruciating pain.

But that doesn’t matter.

What matters is how I describe that fall when telling how it happened.

We say a child fell over.

An adult fell or tripped.

But if I were describing an elderly person, I would most likely say they had a fall.

I don’t make a habit of falling over. Believe it or not, I’ve fallen over around four times in my lifetime, and every time I was stone cold sober. But that’s not the issue here.

The problem lies in the application of language to age.

This didn’t really resonate with me until I fell over several years ago.

I’d been at the coast taking photographs. Ironically, I’d been really careful as it was muddy, and I didn’t want to fall over and muddy up my clothes or break my camera.

On the way home, I stopped at the printers. Running back across the parking lot to my car, I tripped on a curb, went flying, ripped my jeans at the knee, and grazed the skin badly. It hurt like hell.