People always ask if I felt something. “Across your foot? Your shin? Your ankle?” They lean in, eyes wide, waiting for some supernatural confirmation. But the honest answer is no. I didn’t feel a thing. Not a tug, not a push, not a whisper of cold air. Before I can even finish saying that, they usually ask another question: “Then what was it like? Did you just fall? Are you clumsy?” And that word—clumsy—always gets under my skin. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I truly don’t believe I’m clumsy. I fall like everyone else, sure. I work out daily. I’ve taken a few tumbles on predawn runs through the streets of Alexandria, Virginia, where the sidewalk seams can sneak up on you like little snakes. I used to snow ski. I studied martial arts for years and earned a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Clumsy? No. That word doesn’t fit. But something happened on those marble steps at the U.S. Capitol, something that planted me flat in front of a prime minister, and I’ve been trying to explain it ever since.
That day started like so many others in Washington. It was July, sweltering, the kind of heat that makes the air thick and heavy. I was wearing a crisp tan summer suit, not quite the famous “Obama tan suit” that set the internet on fire, but appropriate for the season and, I thought, reasonably dapper for a reporter wandering the halls of Congress. My brown loafers had rubber soles and a slight scuff on the toes. I remember them perfectly. I was covering Congress, chasing stories, doing the usual dance of deadlines and interviews. Then I spotted Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister at the time, descending a spiral staircase with a small entourage of aides and security after a meeting with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. My reporter instincts kicked in. I wanted to ask him a question. But not about tariffs or diplomacy or international relations. I wanted to ask him about baseball. Specifically, I wanted to ask about the possibility of the Tampa Bay Rays splitting their season between Florida and Montreal. It sounds odd, I know. But there was real buzz about it. Big league baseball might return to Quebec, and if Trudeau commented, it would be international news. It would hit Fox, FS1, ESPN, TSN in Canada. Montreal, a city famously robbed of a World Series in 1994 when the best team in baseball was shut down by a strike, might finally have hope again. And I, a baseball fan at heart, was determined to get that story.
So I moved toward him, microphone in hand, mind racing with questions about the Expos and the Rays and the old days at Olympic Stadium. I remembered that there was a photograph of Trudeau as a teenager at a Montreal Expos game, sitting with his father, the legendary Pierre Trudeau, cheering for Andre Dawson, Warren Cromartie, and Steve Rogers. The Expos were long gone from Montreal by then, having moved to Washington in 2005 to become the Nationals. The city had been without Major League Baseball ever since. I thought about Youppi!, the big orange mascot, and what he would say if he could see baseball return. I was lost in nostalgia and possibility. That’s when I stepped toward Trudeau, mumbled something about Tampa Bay, and bought it. I tripped on the lip of the small staircase near the Memorial Door of the U.S. Capitol. My foot caught the edge of my loafer, and I was going down. In that split second, I realized I had a microphone in one hand and no way to catch myself. I knew if I tried to break the fall with my hand, I’d probably break my wrist. So I did the only thing I could. I went with it. I rolled onto my right shoulder, right toward Trudeau, using every bit of martial arts training I had learned from Master Kim and Master Yang back at the dojang. My foot flew absurdly high in the air. My photographer, Robert Fetzer, shouted, “Oh Chad! Oh Chad! Oh Chad!” Trudeau stopped briefly, probably wondering what in the world had just happened. But I leaped to my feet after the roll, hoping he might still say something about baseball. I struck out. He departed, and the moment was gone.
Physically, I was fine. Mentally, I was a little garbled. I’ve worked at the U.S. Capitol for decades, and I know every step, every corridor, every hidden corner. So when people ask what tripped me, I have my theories. Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was my haste to get the story, that eternal journalist’s urge to chase down a quote before it slips away. Maybe it was the scuffed toe of my brown loafer catching the edge of the step. But there’s another theory, one that my inquisitors love to bring up with giddy excitement, like they’ve just solved Final Jeopardy. “Was it a ghost?” they exclaim. And honestly, the Capitol has plenty of ghosts. One of them belongs to a man named William Taulbee, a congressman from Kentucky who died in 1890. Taulbee had a bitter feud with a reporter named Charles Kincaid. Taulbee thought Kincaid was dishonest and wrote nasty stories about his personal life. The congressman was tall and intimidating, and he sometimes physically attacked the smaller reporter. Even after Taulbee left office, the hatred festered. Kincaid knew Taulbee would be at the Capitol, so he brought a pistol. On February 28, 1890, Kincaid shot Taulbee square in the eye. Taulbee stumbled down the House’s “Y” staircase, bleeding all the way, and the blood soaked into the marble. Through some strange chemical reaction, the splotches are still visible today. Taulbee died eleven days later. It probably goes without saying that Taulbee doesn’t like the congressional press corps. And so his phantom is said to lurk around the Capitol, sometimes low-bridging reporters on ornate staircases.
I’m not saying it was Taulbee. I’m not saying it wasn’t. But I’ve always been open to the possibility that the Capitol holds more than just history. There’s something about that building, the weight of it, the layers of stories and secrets and unfinished business. Every hallway has seen triumph and tragedy. Every step has been walked by presidents and protesters, senators and servants, heroes and villains. Maybe it’s not so hard to believe that a man who was shot by a reporter might still be lingering, looking for a little payback. Or maybe it was just a clumsy moment, a simple misstep on a hot July day. But I don’t think so. I’ve spent too many years in that building to dismiss the strange and the inexplicable. I’ve seen things that don’t quite add up, heard stories that raise the hair on the back of your neck. And I’ve learned that sometimes the most reasonable explanation isn’t the only one. So when people ask me what tripped me, I smile and let them come to their own conclusions. I just tell them the truth: I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t see anything. But something got me. Absolutely got me.
In the end, the fall became a story, just like everything else in journalism. And journalism, like baseball, is a game of failure. You swing and miss far more often than you connect. You’re doing great if you’re successful three times out of ten. That day, I never got to ask my question about the Rays and Montreal and the return of baseball to a city that still mourns the Expos. The question was lost the moment I hit the marble. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe the fall was the story all along. It’s certainly the one people remember. They don’t remember what I was trying to ask Trudeau. They remember the reporter who wiped out in front of a prime minister and bounced back up like nothing happened. And maybe that’s a lesson in itself. You can plan, you can prepare, you can chase your story with everything you’ve got, but sometimes life throws you a curveball. Sometimes you trip on a step you’ve walked a thousand times. Sometimes you fall in front of the whole world and all you can do is get back up, brush yourself off, and keep going. Clumsy? Nah. Human. That’s what it is. We all stumble. We all have moments we’d rather forget. But we also have the chance to turn those moments into something else—a story, a laugh, a reminder that none of us are perfect. So I’ll keep my theories, and you can keep yours. But I don’t want to trip you up.
