I. am. a. klutz.
That’s right. If you can fall over it, run into it, drop it, hit yourself in the head with it, fall out of it, or just plain injure yourself with it – I’m your girl.
This fact was clearly illuminated last Tuesday night when I fell out of bed. Oh, but I didn’t JUST fall out of bed! No, I fell out of bed onto the plastic rabbit carrier I keep by the side of the bed. I was rolling, rolling, and then SMACK - onto the carrier. I yelped in pain, rubbed my shoulder, and went back to bed.
When Wednesday morning rolled around, I had a very sore back, a bruise, and pain up the whazooo when I tried to sit up. So, I had to call in sick to work and spend my day flat on my back with a heating pad and enough pain killers to sedate that shark from JAWS.
Geesh! Talk about a klutz. And it didn’t help when I tried to elicit sympathy from my husband AND my mom. They both kept laughing and asking me to tell the story again.
Of course, my family is used to my klutziness. It happens so often that Brett actually made up a theme song for me. Actually, it’s part of a hymn – Grace, grace, no grace (from Grace, grace, God’s grace). He thinks it’s SO funny to sing this when I’ve just hurt myself. I told him it’s blasphemous to desecrate a hymn like that, and I hope he is judged for it some day. It doesn’t seem to matter. He still cranks it up every time he hears me say OUCH!
Mom says I inherit my klutziness from her, but I’ve never seen her do half the stupid things I’ve done. You know how you have that horrible dream in high school? The one where you embarrass yourself in front of the entire school? Well, I’ve actually done it.
When I was in ninth grade, I was the only girl in our class who wasn’t on the junior varsity cheerleading squad. Oh, and believe me, that was my choice. No one wants to see the 300 lb. girl waving pom-poms around. Unfortunately, the other three girls in my class who were on the squad had ZERO talent. It was kind of sad, actually.
Anyway, they’d worked out this “routine” that involved someone doing a cartwheel. Well, none of them could actually do a cartwheel but (apparently) it was “integral” to the “routine.” I was joking around with them how it was so funny that the one person who could do a cartwheel (me) wasn’t on the squad. They immediately pounced on me! After endless hours of cajoling, I agreed to do two cartwheels during the routine.
The basketball game was just heating up when it was time to do my first cartwheel. As I was going into the upside down cartwheel position, I realized something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. One of our boys had thrown the ball almost completely out of bounds. A boy from the other team was trying to stop it. He ran out onto the sidelines and directly into me – completely upside down!
He knocked into me with such force that I was propelled (backwards and upside down) into the Senior class’ popcorn concession stand.
My entire upper body crash landed in the popcorn machine. I ended up straddling the candy bar table in my culottes, while my white shirt soaked up the butter from the popcorn. About one second elapsed until the machine broke underneath me, and we both landed in a heap on the floor.
The boy from the other school just stood there, basketball in hand, mouth gaping wide open. Eventually, he managed to eek out a “sorry,” before heading back into the game.
All eyes were on me. The seniors were mad because I’d violated their candy and broken the popcorn machine. The cheerleaders were mad that I’d ruined their routine. The basketball players were mad because I’d taken the focus off them. But I think the crowd enjoyed it. If their laughter was any indication. I took my now yellow shirt, along with my humiliation, to the locker room to change.
After that, I never had another embarrassing high school dream.
After all, I’d already lived it!
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