When we will ever learn? This may seem like a rhetorical question -- but even those get answered on occasion. Just ask my coworker who wailed one crummy day "Can it get any worse?" right before his car blew a tire. Yes, it could get worse. And yes, too, we will learn our lessons as soon as life’s little teaching methods hit us with a big enough whammy.

Like scraping our face along the pavement. Allow me to explain. As many people I know, I try to defy all laws of human nature, including the very fact that I am human. I race against age, rollick against time and defend myself drastically against that necessity called sleep. I would think I don’t have to eat, either, but I just so happen to like apples and strawberries way too much to give them up.

Also like many I know, I spend half my day going 90 miles an hour while the other half is spent going 110. Everything should have been done yesterday or the week before -- including this column! -- even when the deadline is far off into the yonder yellow-green horizon.

Oh, yes. And I can also leap tall buildings... with my 20-pound back pack on. Or at least run for the bus. That’s half a mile away. While also burdened with a shopping bag full of Odd Job junk, four huge throw pillows and wearing two-inch heels.

It didn’t work.  Let’s be honest here. The bus wasn’t really half a mile away -- more like half a block. And they weren’t huge throw pillows but medium barstool covers that I thought were pillows until I read the tag that you are not supposed to remove. And they really weren’t two-inch heels. They were wedge slip-ons.

But running for the bus still didn’t work. Which is why I fell flat on my face. Actually, I more like SPLATTERED in the middle of the sidewalk, with my backpack thrusting me forward, much like a turtle in reverse. My whole head conked the pavement where my glasses smashed into my eyebrow bone and upper right cheek.

It was one of those moments from the movies when time stands still and the world goes at a weird camera angle. I really didn’t go down to hit the pavement -- it came up to hit me, complete with little stars circling my head. One of those cartoon bumps you always see on Wyle E. Coyote grew out of my skull.

After a nearby shopkeeper and his wife, two observant young men and a kid on a scooter all surrounded me, brought me a Bounty quicker picker upper since, yes, head wounds do bleed profusely, I slowly tried to stand up. The first words out of my mouth were: "I guess I missed the bus."

At least that prompted a laugh from the audience. I have long ago learned to look for some type of humor in a situation. If you don’t laugh you weep. I also found this tumble on my face done learnt me some new lessons, too. Like slow down. Relax. There are only so many hours in a day and you cannot be two places at once (until they perfect cloning). Besides, it’s even a law of physics. Only one mass can occupy one space at one time.

It was also reinforced that I am neither Hercules nor Xena -- I am a human being (although I wouldn’t mind being Xena). This is a biggie I keep dodging, as if that will somehow change things rather than simply make me miserable and wallowing in denial.

Other things I learned were a). the brand-new pants I was wearing, which ended up splattered with blood, are dry clean only; b). if you leave ice in the freezer too long, by the time you go to use it for a head wound it will have evaporated; c). my glasses could be classified "unbreakable" -- and they most likely saved my eye.