To be frank, I was not rooting for her to win for Best Actress that last Sunday night in February. To be franker, I wasn’t rooting for anyone. I have no interest in awards shows any longer. So I didn’t know until the Monday morning after the last Sunday night in February—while sweating off my weekend’s over-points on the elliptical machine—that while climbing to the stage to retrieve her Little Gold Man award, Jennifer Lawrence fell. I let out a yowl that made a few heads on the row of treadmills in front of me turn. It was then that I fell in love with Jennifer Lawrence. And this is why:
In high school, after my skull made an unfortunate connection with a door, my friends rushed me to the hospital in our large resort town, where the admitting nurse took one look at me, went to my files and called my parents. She knew me, because I had just been there after nearly severing a toe while riding shotgun on a bicycle, which was a few weeks after, while running on the boardwalk in bare feet, my other foot had become impaled on a piece of wood the size a popsicle stick. My worst moment: After rushing off a bus, I smacked right into the Plexiglass at the very crowded stop. Such gracelessness continues:
Last week, while leaving my office, chatting with a colleague, I stepped off the sidewalk, and fell.
Okay, back to Jen. After going home and watching her take that tumble on YouTube, about a dozen times, I clicked on another video thumbnail and found she’d also bumbled her way over a chair on her way to accept the Screen Actors Guild Award, where on stage she suffered a “wardrobe malfunction,” her dress separating in the anatomical region my grandmother would have identified in Yiddish as her knish. Jennifer Lawrence is living everyone’s WORST NIGHTMARES!
Of course, this is all assuming she is the REAL DEAL. I did some time as a celebrity reporter, and I’d think, Wow, I got So-and-So to say that? Until I’d read the exact same words in other interviews. They’re actors, I’d remind myself. Everything they do is scripted. Even…falling? No, not Jen. In this month that begins with a day when we intentionally fool others, I want to believe my love is…true. So thank you, Jennifer Lawrence, for making clumsiness charming. The next time I go crashing to the floor, I will hold my head high!
