A Brief History of Overall Clutziness and General Stupidity: Part One

I am not the most graceful pigeon in the flock. In fact, if I were pigeon, I would probably fly into a solid, very obvious, 500 year-old wall while attempting the ever-popular "dive-bomb" move—AND I'd miss my target while so doing. While laziness has certainly played a key role in my most recent blogging lapse, so too has the last item on this list (which is by no means complete, but which does contain more than a few of my more stellarly stupid moves over the past almost-four decades).

Yes, what I've done, basically, is compile a list of ways in which I've injured myself. Why? Well, I'm glad you asked, Figment Of My Imagination! Because while it's not so much encouraging to see each and every recollected move of overall clutziness and general stupidity spelled out in the totality of its funny backstory and/or ridiculous glory, it IS heartwarming—as I struggle to recover from my most recent bad move—that I've managed, eventually, to get past each one.

So sit back, alternate relaxing and cringing, and most of all, enjoy! (Hey, I can still type, so it can't be THAT bad.)

As you may have noticed from the delicate forshadowing of "Part One" in the title of this piece, I got a little long-winded and had to break this particular tale of woe into more digestible bits. Or at least something that won't choke you outright.

1972 ... Very young wyo, in a blatant breaking of the established rules about NOT tormenting the chickens, slips from the fence she was standing on and peering over the top of, and falls, ripping open the inside of her lip on the top edge of the fence as she goes. A thrilling trip to the emergency room, some 25 miles away, ensues, of which all she can remember now is bright lights and scary faces. No stitches were required.

~1973 ... While playing in between the framed walls in her newly-constructed home's basement, wyo decides—despite the clear hazard of NAILS sticking out of said frame at seemingly random intervals—to hang on to a cross-beam above her, pull her knees up from the floor, and swing back and forth in front of the nail. It doesn't take long, of course, given her already-established propensity for overall clutziness, to drive a nail right into her knee. She remembers limping up the stairs to her mom, streaming tears and terrified at the sight of the puncture wound, but not the aftermath of the event, except that some years later, she had to have a giant cyst excised from said knee. She now looks back at this event as the defining moment of her entry into the widely-participatory field that is general stupidity.

1976 ... While performing an easy (for her) spin around the highest of the single-bar monkey bar set, wyo loses her grip, falls, and plants her chin firmly into the concrete-like surface of the hard-packed dirt below. A trip to the local clinic, some 10 miles hence, is warranted, and she receives a small but impressive—primarily because said stitches were sewed onto her very white skin in a high-contrast black thread—set of stitches in her chin, which is then covered with a band-aid of gargantuan proportions. She remembers the humiliation of being seen in such a fashion monstrosity more than the stunning nastiness of the tear in her flesh, but manages to cherish the scar that results.

~1980 ... Racing through the woods near her home, wyo slips and manages to ground herself in such a way that she rips her right palm open on an old, fallen expanse of barbed-wire fencing that she had avoided countless of times before. The cut is only about an inch long and is surprisingly straight for having been created by barbed wire, but because said wire was rusty, wyo wins a free trip to the local clinic—with which she is now well-familiar—for what turns out to be a slightly-overdue tetanus shot.

1983 ... Rounding the corner of her bed, wyo catches the pinky toe of her right foot on a nearby bookshelf, pulling it an estimated 45° out of its normal alignment. When she is unable to wear her right shoe the following morning due to pain and swelling, she is duly carted back to the clinic for x-rays, followed by crutches and instructions to "rest." Again, the treatment proves to be more painful than the injury itself, as she is incapacitated enough not to attend a state fair trip with her family that weekend. Being a worthy teenager, she spends her first weekend of convalescence moping and whining.

1983 ... During the course of "healing" her broken toe, wyo is instructed to firmly tape the injured digit to the uninjured adjacent toe, creating a splint of sorts. While she unenthusiastically follows this advice, she is nonetheless thorough, and before long—before long AT ALL, in fact"—she is permitted to return to normal shoes and most activities, while continuing to tape her toe. However, since one of her activities consists of "early morning band practice" on a rather damp practice field, and since she tapes her toes so tightly that she creates a small cut between the splint toe and the next toe, she unwittingly creates yet another health problem. The cut is tender, but rapidly becomes red, sore, and when wyo—late on a Friday night, of course—notices an angry, red line running up her foot from the cut, she sees her (college biology instructor) mother for a consult. Whereupon she is aghast that her mother shoots out of her reading chair and herds her back to her room to redress for a near-midnight trip to the emergency room: wyo has managed to contract "blood poisoning" (more properly known as "lymph poisoning") and is told by hospital personnel that she's fortunate not to have waited even 12 hours longer. Antibiotics and medicated soakings—followed by THOROUGH DRYING and only HIGH-LEVEL taping—follow, and the frightening line thankfully recedes.

1984 ... Thoroughly healed and happily over the dreadful Saga of the Broken Toe, wyo wanders, barefoot, into the bathroom one bright, sunny day, veers a bit too far to the right, catches her right pinky toe on a very-slightly protruding cabinet door, and BREAKS THAT SUCKER AGAIN. She is not amused by the emergency-room doctor's comment that, should she break it a third time, he would be suggest amputation, but she nevertheless makes an effort to smile at his lame sally, because he is kind of cute. Because the consensus is that this break occurred at least due in part to poor healing of the last break, wyo is given substantially more stringent instructions regarding her activities. Also, in addition to crutches and "rest," wyo is provided with a "shoe" composed of a textured 2x4 with a BRIGHT BLUE fabric upper and stunningly white laces; she is instructed to wear said shoe forEVER—or so it seems, as her teenaged sense of time is, like everything else, distorted. This time, however, the toe heals well and thoroughly. Thereafter, wyo refrains from roaming her house barefoot.

To Be (Unfortunately) Continued