This one time, a guy fell from a balcony

Several years ago I was wrapping up a rather momentous night. It was a changing of the guards, as it was my former supervisor's final night on the job and I was the incoming supervisor. It was a smooth night as I recall, with the only problem being a rowdy group of guests on the 4th floor of our hotel. They were celebrating a bachelor party, if my memory serves me right.

Around 6:30 in the morning, my former supervisor and I are having the obligatory talk - wishing each other good luck in our future endeavors, passing on advice, etc. Actually, I was just nodding my head without really paying attention to what he was saying. Around 6:45 I got a call from a frantic guest. Someone had fallen from their balcony and was needing some serious medical attention. That's right - someone fell from their balcony. I immediately called 911 and my supervisor started the rigorous process of documenting the incident. Here's what I remember.

It turns out that one of the folks partying on the 4th floor was the one that fell. That's approximately a 30 foot plummet onto a not-so-soft concrete pavement. You can see the point of impact from the back office, so naturally I had to take a peek. I didn't see much of anything, other than some EMS guys helping someone into the back of an ambulance.

The first thing I thought was - hot damn! This guy just fell 30 feet and he, for the most part, was able to walk to the ambulance. There was a very distinct limp going on; one that you would expect from such an accident. I was amazed that the person didn't wreck their body any worse because I was expecting to see someone getting strapped onto a gurney.

The next thing I thought was - how in the hell does one manage to fall like that? It's not like our balconies don't have guard rails on them. You have to try in order to fall from them. When the police came by, I overheard them talking about how the person that fell had dropped their cell phone and went after it. Right off the balcony. 30 feet. Onto the pavement below.

Look, I've bobbled my cell phone while taking it out of my pocket before and dropped it. It seems like no matter how hard I try to catch it, I'm never fast enough when I lunge for my falling cell phone. You know what I've never done before, though? I've never dropped my cell phone from the balcony of my 4th floor hotel room and jumped after it.

Word is, there was a significant amount of alcohol involved in the incident. That goes a long way toward explaining the extreme stupidity of the event. I could only imagine the amount of pain that person felt as the alcohol wore off later that morning.

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Fast forward about 3 years later...

I was having a meeting with an acquaintance one afternoon. He and I drove down to a local bar where we were going to meet up with another person to talk about marketing a line of clothing. As we're waiting for the person in charge of the clothing to show up, I get introduced to one of the friends of the acquaintance.

As we're exchanging pleasantries, it comes to light that the friend of the acquaintance was in fact the person that jumped off the balcony. I was completely dumbfounded as this person recounted the entire situation. I thought he was full of shit until he started giving verifying details. Turns out that alcohol wasn't the only thing involved, either. Yayo was involved (allegedly) as well, which helps explain the whole "jumping for the cell phone" routine. I felt like I was in the presence of a celebrity. Scratch that - more like a complete idiot.

-Captain Stamina