Question the Ceiling

When I was very young, my mother noticed that I had developed an odd habit: before entering a new room, I would pause in the doorway and check out the ceiling. She wondered why I would do such a thing, and remembered back to the following incident.

My father was working in the attic. I'm not sure what he was doing; maybe he was putting in new insulation, or putting things into storage. Our attic was not entirely "finished". In many parts, it didn't even have a true floor: you had to walk on wooden beams (my brother and I were not allowed to explore that part of the attic.) Between the beams was exposed insulation, underneath which was the ceiling of the room beneath. While my father was working in the part without a floor, his foot slipped. He fell through to his waist but managed to catch himself before he fell all the way through.

Of course, I was in my crib in the room below. It might've been a playpen. Imagine the terror and shock of a child alone in his room who witnesses two legs come crashing through the ceiling above him. I screamed bloody murder. Chaos ensued. My mother thought to run to help my father since she checked and saw I wasn't actually in any danger. My father kept yelling for her to get me out of the way, since he couldn't see where I was situated. I was just yelling. I don't remember any of this, but I'm fairly confident I would've been shouting my lungs out.

In any case, don't worry, all ended well.

Except for my ensuing distrust of ceilings. My mother worried that I might develop a phobia. (I didn't.) What kind of child has to look at the ceiling before he enters a room?

A philosopher.

In my own personal mythology, I have just decided that the moment my father fell through the ceiling was the moment I became a philosopher. Because that moment taught me to take nothing for granted. If you can't even assume the ceiling, what can you assume? I learned to ask every question imaginable, because the question you never thought to ask will have an answer that delivers an unimaginable shock. I hadn't thought to wonder, What if someone comes smashing through the wall above me?, and because of my narrow scope of vision, I ended up screaming my head off in fear. If only I had thought of the question, I could've calmly considered the feet dangling above me and thought, Oh, so this is how it is.

I think this episode also explains my love of the surreal. After all, aren't people supposed to fall through floors? Since when do people fall through ceilings?

Since before I can remember.