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

Continued From (You Guessed It!) Part One

~1985 ... On a camping trip some 40 miles from the nearest medical establishment (a new record!), wyo falls some 15 feet out of a tree—yes, at the tired old age of 16 (or possibly 17?)—and although she lands on her feet, she immediately collapses. The split-second experience immediately after the fall during which she cannot feel her legs is terrifying to her, but sensation rapidly returns, bringing with it an intense lower back pain. She marches in her high school band competition the next day anyway, but thereafter spends several weeks recovering with the aid of high doses of ibuprofen. She does deign to retire from competitive tree-climbing.

~1989 ... As a young college student possessed of painful shyness and delicate sensibilities, wyo is working hard to "put herself out there." One of the activities she chooses to do so includes bicycling some unpaved trails near campus with a group of other college students. Because she has only a "touring" bicycle—and because she doesn't have enough sense to think through the potential perils of riding her thin-tired bike over gravel that is at least as wide as her tires—wyo attempts the foolish endeavor boldly. And if that weren't enough, she decides she can JUMP her bicycle up from the gravel onto the first of many small bridges along the route, even though she's never even tried to do this before. The wipeout that ensues, while not of Biblical proportions, is nonetheless impressive, and although the gravel and dirt embedded deeply into her knee (not as deep as the 1973 nail, though) is painful, it pales in comparison to the super-cute male bicyclist who stops—because he can't get around her sprawled body—to ask if she is okay. After assuring him that she is, and laughing over the bleeding mess on her leg, wyo limps off, walking her bike back to her truck. She does not cry until she's safely home, washing off her road rash in privacy.

~1989 ... During a chemistry laboratory session, wyo blatantly disregards a safety instruction in her haste to smell the "sweet and fruity" scent of the product of the experiment. Because the ammonia that concealed the scent had not, however, been fully evaporated before she stuck her face over the crucible—rather than using her hand to waft a diluted portion of the odor towards her—she blacks out for the first time in her life, awakening some (small) time later in the hallway. Having no memory of getting to the hallway, she is aghast to discover that her geekish instructor and (you guessed it) CUTE male lab partner had to carry-drag her incapacitated self out of class. It is gruesomely embarrassing to admit her error and return to class to finish the experiment, but she does so, and her instructor is a tremendously good sport about it, and doesn't even yell. Reflecting on the unforgettability of the incident—and the fact that she has retained a strong aversion to the scent of ammonia even nearly TWENTY YEARS after the fact—wyo realizes that he knew damn well he didn't have to yell.

1990 ... While playing a fierce game of raquetball with the man she would end up marrying, wyo runs right into a wall, connecting with her (GUESS! JUST GUESS!) TOE. While her right foot continues to suffer the effects of The Breaking Game, it is not, at least, her pinky toe that suffers this time. Instead, the x-rays reveal that she has shifted a chunk of the top of her big toe ever-so-slightly back from its traditional positioning. Back to the highly unfashionable 2x4 shoe wyo goes, although because this break does not endanger the structural integrity of the toe, she requires it more for the fact that she can't put on her right shoe comfortably anymore rather than the healing process. Her clutziness remains a great source of irritation to her, but wyo rationalizes that at least now she can drink alcohol legally.

~2000 ... After retrieving her dropped soap in the shower, wyo turns to stand and connects her tailbone with the tub's faucet. While the grapefruit-sized bruise cannot be seen by anyone who is not offered a private viewing—and very, very few are—it is truly stellar in its artistic rendering of a black-and-blue rainbow reflected over a pond. The coloration becomes even more impressive as it gradually fades into yellow and green, and wyo becomes a firm believer in the old adage, "Let dropped soaps lie."

~2002 ... During a particularly frisky session of performing the horizontal mambo with her husband, wyo rolls right when she should have rolled left, and whilst attempting to extract herself from an already awkward position, stabs her thumb into her eye, causing her to see stars of a distinctly different variety than the ones she was hoping to see. The resulting black eye and her blushing unwillingness to reveal the cause—memo to clutzes everywhere: ALWAYS come up with a better story than the truth when it involves stabbing yourself in the eye during sex—concerns a work colleague, who far-too-publicly (and very, very seriously) suggests that if her husband is hurting her, she should really seek help. Embarrassment of epic proportions follows, though the ridiculousness of the idea makes wyo laugh out loud despite being entirely appalled. This honest reaction thankfully silences the over-vocal (though well-intentioned) colleague.

~2004 ... In a remarkably ill-advised attempt to retrieve the mail from the mailbox without stopping the forward motion of her vehicle, wyo fails to flip the mailbox's door closed quickly enough, resulting in the mailbox's handle/lip ripping a six inch-long arc of the skin on her left forearm. While not deep or ragged enough to require medical attention, it is nonetheless a dire-looking tear. Fortunately, wyo does not mind embarrassing herself with the truth of the matter at work this time, and her coworkers—well acquainted by now with her proclivity to trip over things (even things that aren't there)—hardly even seem surprised.

2008 ... In the stressful midst of preparing an urgent Corporate report, wyo sneezes. This seemingly insignificant act takes on epic importance when, simultaneous to the sneeze, wyo feels her lower back spasm and lock into a three-ibuprofen-pill pain-level. She spends the following weekend in the warm embrace of her herbal heating pad, and the following week recovering.

2008 ... Determined to get back into running, wyo scoffs at the icy conditions and goes out for an early morning jog-trot-pant-wheeze. She notes the slippery conditions carefully and skirts them by staying along the gravely shoulder of one of her favorite trails. At the bottom of the hill that is her weenie-distance turn-back point, she carefully crosses the road to loop around, but not carefully enough. Too late, she realizes her error, landing VERY forcefully on her well-padded backside. This would have been fine—although mortifying enough—except that her forward momentum across the black ice-slick carries her into the slide so irreparably that her head hits the pavement all-too-painfully, and audibly. She stands carefully, stunned and wary of potential dizziness, and wishes very much that she had brought her cellphone with her on this ill-advised excursion. She slowly makes her way home, where she promptly downs a dose-and-a-half of ibuprofen. She does not discover that the primary injury was not to her behind, head, or pride, but rather to her left shoulder, for about an hour.

And here's where we are now, just about one month post-flattening: I'm going to physical therapy twice a week (I do like the massages but the rest of the appointments are not so much fun), doing twice-daily stretching exercises for my shoulder (girly push-ups seem eons away in attainability these days), seeing the Corporate Ergonomics Expert to make sure my work-station is properly arranged (it wasn't), correcting my posture constantly (it sucks), and wearing a posture-enforcing torture device to work (this thing is such a bitch that I cannot IMAGINE what hell a corset must have been). All in all, I think I got off fairly lightly, as I did hit the pavement HARD with my rock-like head, but to be perfectly honest with you, I'd rather stab myself in the eye during sex on a daily basis than go through falling on the ice again just once (your mileage may vary).

I'm not sure why I decided to compile this list—although I did see when I was checking a few dates with my medical record that I left out ... well, rather a lot—or what the point of writing it up was. There's certainly people clutzier than me out there (maybe?), and granted that accidents can happen to anyone: that's why they're called "accidents" and not "idiot-planned injuries." You can't anticipate everything and even walking on eggshells has some potential for disaster.

But do let's be careful out there, shall we? And by all means, if you've got a clutzy and/or stupid story of your own to share, please feel free.