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Yo miraba la calle y se me cayó algo valioso.

Yo miraba la calle y se me cayó algo valioso.
I was looking at the street and I dropped something valuable.
From Lesson 173:Accidental events (se me rompió)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Yo miraba la calle y se me cayó algo valioso.

How does "se me cayó" mean "I dropped"?
In Spanish, accidental actions are often phrased so that the object does the action to you, taking away the blame. Se me cayó literally translates to "it fell from me." The se shows it was unintentional, and the indirect object pronoun me shows who was affected by the accident.
Why is the verb conjugated as "cayó" (it fell) and not "caí" (I fell)?
In the accidental se construction, the thing you dropped is the grammatical subject of the sentence. Since you dropped algo valioso (something valuable), the verb must be in the third-person singular form: cayó. You are simply the person it happened to, represented by me.
Why do we use two different past tenses here: "miraba" and "cayó"?
This sentence perfectly shows how the imperfect and preterite tenses work together. Miraba is in the imperfect tense because it sets the background scene ("I was looking"). Cayó is in the preterite tense because it was a sudden, one-time event ("it fell") that interrupted that background action.
I know adjectives have to match gender, so why is it "valioso" and not "valiosa"?
The adjective valioso describes the word algo (something). Because algo is an indefinite pronoun that doesn't have a specific gender, Spanish always defaults to the masculine singular form for any adjectives attached to it.

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