The Ballad of Brenda's Bouncing Bedlam

Brenda, usually a connoisseur of couch-based activities, decided it was time to embrace her inner athlete. Her chosen instrument of self-improvement: an oversized, defiant exercise ball. The instructor on the YouTube video, impossibly serene, demonstrated a "reverse crunch" with effortless grace. Brenda, however, immediately discovered Newton's laws of motion applied rather aggressively to her attempt. A slight wobble morphed into a full-body shimmy, then a slow-motion topple. The ball, sensing its liberation, shot from beneath her, caroming off the grandfather clock with a seismic *dong!* Brenda's flailing arms, attempting a dramatic recovery, merely connected with her cat, Whiskers, who had been observing the ordeal with the critical eye of a seasoned gymnastics judge. Whiskers, offended, retaliated by mistaking Brenda's ponytail for a feather toy, launching himself into a feline aerial assault. This sent Brenda backward, directly into a precarious stack of *Marie Kondo: The Art of Tidying Up* books, which subsequently triggered an avalanche of meticulously folded laundry. She finally landed, a human pretzel of limbs, yoga mat, and cat hair, amidst a blizzard of socks, underwear, and one very disgruntled Whiskers. Her core felt no stronger, but her living room had certainly achieved maximum entropy. The single, remaining dignity was a rogue sock, now perfectly impaled on the ceiling fan.