Klutz

I like to think of myself as being couth, coordinated, even graceful. But I need to face reality: I'm just clumsy. Most people would probably say I'm no clumsier than they are, but when it's you being clumsy all the time, it's hard to be objective.

Cases in point:

When I was eight, I broke my arm trying to ride my bike over one of those parking lot bumper curbs. Two other boys were doing it, too, but I was the one with the bright idea of turning the curb around so that the straight vertical side was facing me. Six weeks in a cast. Years later, I was riding a bike along the side of the road when my front tire got caught in the rut of the curb (a different kind of curb, but still a curb) and flipped me down onto the street. Two broken ribs. I've learned to stay away from curbs of all kinds. I don't even curb my appetite.

When I was ten, I slipped off the end of a diving board at summer camp and hit my head on the way down. I had to be fished out by one of the counselors in front of all the other boys. Birds and stars over my head. He suggested I walk to the end of the board instead of running, and I haven't run since. I didn't even dive for a few decades. When I finally decided to, though (just a few weeks ago, in fact), I found I'd lost the knack and could only belly flop. Red stomach.

One of my high school jobs was stocking dairy products in the cooler of a 7-11. I was the kid whose hand you'd see shoving the milk and eggs up to the front of the rows behind the glass doors. As you probably know, the entrance to those coolers is a door very large and extremely heavy. The one at this store also swung open left toward the glass door farthest to the right. It's just common sense to assume those doors have springs to stop their momentum when you pull them open. Ha. One night, with my hands full, I managed to crack open the door just enough to get my shoe inside and swing it wide enough to let me in. Next thing I knew, I heard the shattering of glass and the "Whoa!" of my fellow employee. I'd lasted at that job a full week, which at that point was a record for me.

I don't know if you can technically call the next series of accidents "accidents" in the sense that it was my fault. My knees are built funny. Each leg has one tiny bone missing that helps support the patella on the side facing the patella in the other leg. In other words, on rare occasions, I'm prone to dislocation. This is the worst pain I've ever felt (worse than a cortisone shot or listening to Madonna give an interview). The first time it happened, I was climbing up a grassy slope beside a canal. It's funny how the mind works. Because it had never happened before, I had no idea what had just happened and therefore it didn't hurt as much as the others would later on. In fact, as the paramedics were helping me to the ambulance, the kneecap just simply slipped back into place. Easy peasy.

The second time it happened, I was doing cartwheels in a friend's front yard at night. (OK, yes, I was all of 17, but I was a silly 17.) This was just a few months after the first knee had given way, and I think I'd been relying too heavily on the second one to support my weight. This time the thunk of it even told my friend something was terribly wrong, and I was in considerable agony there on the grass. An ambulance showed up, and one of the paramedics threw a sheet over me to keep me warm until they could get the stretcher out of the back. Maybe this paramedic was new or something, but he draped the sheet right up over my head. Meanwhile, my friend's parents drove up and promptly panicked. They were certain their son was lying dead on their front lawn. His mother rushed over, lifted the sheet just far enough to see that I wasn't her son, cried, "Oh, thank God," and covered my face again. She liked me, really she did.

The last time it happened, I was vacuuming. (Let this be a lesson to you clean freaks.) I crouched down to pull some wires out of the way beneath a table, and I made the mistake of twisting my body too far in one direction with my legs still in full crouch mode. Down I went. What made this the worst dislocation of all was that I was alone and not expecting visitors, so in order to get to the phone to call for assistance, I had to slap the knee back into place myself. I only made things worse, though, when I slapped it in the wrong direction. I ended up in a major, all-but-debilitating splint and crutches for many weeks. When I hobbled into work my first day back and told my coworkers what had happened, one of the guys whispered, "Shh! For God's sake, tell people it was a football injury."

Boot camp. I was too uncoordinated to carry a rifle (or "piece"), so I was a guide-on, which meant I carried one of the flags ahead of the company when we were marching. The flag was attached to a long, hollow, metal pole. One day, I heard something rattling inside the pole, maybe a tiny pebble. I shoved my finger inside of it as if this was going to do anything but get my finger stuck, which is what happened. The guys all crowded around me in the head as our Recruit Chief Petty Officer tried to remove my finger with warm soap and water. It was a festive atmosphere. Weeks later, just before graduation, two of the guys told me that was their favorite part of boot camp.

I see I'm being longwinded again (or "longfingered," since I'm typing), so here are some other highlights in brief:

Discovering that I have no equilibrium when wearing French earplugs. A sign language class I took in college went on a soundless field trip to a local sub shop for lunch, and I kept knocking the student beside me off the sidewalk and into the gutter.

Falling down during an 8-mile run and tearing a rotator cuff, only I didn't discover it for months until I turned my arm just right. Because it had been so long, bursitis had developed, and the surgeon said afterwards that it had been one of his most interesting procedures. He even pulled out some nifty color photos to show me.

Dropping a plate of flaming cherries jubilee onto someone's table at a church dinner.

Leaning on a friend's lit cigarette on a pool table.

Trying to stop a fire in my fondue pot by putting it under running water, which promptly scorched my ceiling. (Yes, I know now to cover it instead.)

Leaning my hand on a heavy wooden TV stand with a humungous old box TV on it and having the whole thing come crashing down with me on top of it. (I was dusting at the time. I really need to stop doing housework.) Two years later, I still have the remnant of a scrape across my stomach, which someone recently mistook for a surgical scar.

Finally, last week I cut myself opening a new box of tin foil. I was being very careful, sliding my finger inch by inch beneath the sealed flap, but I guess I wasn't careful enough. Those little metal teeth are fierce, and the pain was somewhere between a Madonna interview and listening to "The Twelve Days of Christmas." A Band-Aid wouldn't do it, as this was more than a cut; it was an open flap of skin through which my blood couldn't wait to flee from, as if it feared my next mishap. I had to wrap my finger in a gauze pad and hold it firm with a rubber band. Almost as painful: trying to lift the gauze pad off to replace it. Yikes!

So there you have it, Exhibits A through N. I could just as easily have rattled off a list of times when I didn't have an accident, but would a list of exhibits A through C even be worth it?