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4/18/2008

Dear Clumsy Self,

Be careful. Please. Maybe you could pay better attention from time to time and not have such stupid accidents. Granted, it does seem to be hereditary in your family. Your mother and sister have had their share of injuries during normally safe, mundane activities such as walking up stairs or vacuuming. This week alone, you:
  • Fell flat on your face at 5 in the morning, scraping your leg on the metal door on one of the dog crates. You were lying on the floor thinking that since E was out of town, it was probably a bad time to break your body. Luckily, you were okay. Just a little scraped and bruised. But, that is par for the course.
  • As you walked from the hallway to the living room, you caught your wedding band on the doorknob bolt and continued traveling forward. It felt like your finger was being ripped off. At least you were smart enough to move the ring to another finger before swelling occured.
I suppose all of this started, many years ago, when you were about 3 or 4 years old and took that big tumble down the flight of stairs in your house. Luckily, everything was fine, but it did lead to your first, and amazingly only (so far), ambulance ride.

As a child, there were also the incidents of the foot getting caught in the adult bicycle spokes and the arm getting a little sliced up on the metal fan, but, again, you were quite lucky that no permanent damage was done. But, just about every child has freak accidents. It's those you've had as a "grown up" that are extraordinary. Here are a few more:
  • A couple of years ago, your sister and her husband were coming for a visit. You were frantically straightening up the house. In a moment of moving in way too high speed, you ran smack dab into the door jamb--with your face. Ow. There was pain and swelling, but perhaps the worst part was the embarrassment.
  • You often do things like leaving all of the lights off if going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, so you don't "wake up too much." Whatever that means. One time you did this and since you were kind of bleary and not very awake, instead of making a right turn to exit the bathroom, you walked straight into the bathtub. Your feet hit the tub and you pitched forward over the side. Your protective extension responses kicked in and your arms flew out in order to stop the falling and save your head and brain. Your shoulders and upper back were very sore for several days.
  • The one accident in the past 15 years that led to an ER visit happened on a weekend morning. Your apartment at that time had a small closet in the kitchen with pantry shelves, a stacked washer and dryer, and a garbage can. There was a box on top of the trash, so you leaned over and pushed it down (I guess you didn't recycle so much back then). As you did that, the powdered laundry detergent that had been spilled on top, and that you were oblivious to, flew up into your eyes. It burned, you screamed and E helped you rinse them as best he could and then drove you to the hospital. The doctor explained that laundry detergents are made to dissolve protein and the eye is essentially...yes, a big glob of protein. You had done a good job of rinsing one eye, but the other had superficial burns. Again, there was no lasting injury to the eye. Just a day patched with restricted visual activity.
Those are just a few examples of your clumsiness. E has said things like, "I can't believe you get paid to teach kids to walk!" Usually you are face down on the carpet at that point. At least in the above cases, the causes of the scrapes, sprains, or melty eyeballs are known. The number of mystery bruises on your person at any given time is quite astounding.

Take care.

Love,
Me

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHAT. THE. HELL.

Shayne said...

I know how you feel! I hurt myself on a regular basis due to my clumsiness.

Once my sister broke a toe as she was running to the kitchen...she remembered that we had Steakum in the freezer.

Anonymous said...

Wow! :)

ren said...

i can laugh at this because you know what i have done and that i feel for you sister, totally.

No Milk Please said...

i am also a bit scatterbrained sometimes and somewhat clumsy. also careless. i am wondering why i haven't driven into a ditch yet...

the slackmistress said...

I am one of those people who pick up sports skills easily, but also manages to injure themselves walking down the street. So I, erm, feel your pain!

Anonymous said...

i just injured my finger on the seat of my car.
be proud - these types of events take real talent.

Caveman said...

I don't mean to bring the mood down, but it could be worse:

I have a customer who comes into the store I work at every once and awhile, and it is a real sad case. One night while trying to get to the bathroom while half asleep he makes a wrong turn and instead of opening the door the the bathroom he opens the door to the basement.

6 months later he wakes up in the hospital completely blind and unable move. The doctors believed he'd never walk again.

Anonymous said...

I'm usually clumsy as when I'm doing 5 things at once and in way too much of a hurry.
Like tumbling downstairs in my (slippery) socks to answer the telephone.

~**Dawn**~ said...

May I suggest a protectivve layer of bubble wrap? ;-) Not over your nose & mouth though. That would present a whole separate set of issues. On second thought, maybe that isn't such a good idea... What about that commercial for... ummmm... something (ha! how effective is *that* advertising? I remember commercial content but not the product/service?! I digress...) where the whole world is covered in bubble wrap...

bear said...

I some how I stumbled onto your blog. I hurt myself all day long jamming my fingers into sharp formica counters etc. My coworkers think I'm crazy. I don't feel like I'm moving too fast but I must be.
Anyway I understand and I also love your page here. I went to preview your adorable looking Hamster book but couldn't turn the pages. Excellent photos! I think you must be an interesting artist.
(Do you know what cuases clumsiness?)

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