If I Stumble, If I Fall

My entire life, I have been known as the family klutz. I trip across perfectly flat floors, fall up stairs, run into door frames (hell, run into doors), crash into cabinet doors that were left open (yes, by me), and step into holes. I stub my toes, knock my shins into corners of furniture, and catch my toe in the covers when getting up and fall out of bed.

For example, when I was in high school, I ran in the house one evening while out with friends to get something out of my room. Our house was a split level, with the bedrooms up six steps from the living room. There was a wrought iron banister on the wall on the right side, similar to this one:

As I ran up the stairs, my purse strap caught on the scrolled end of the rail, yanking me like a dog on the end of its chain and slamming me into the wall face first., where I collapsed onto the stairs in a heap.

Another example: I was home from college for the weekend. Never much of a morning person, I had staggered out of bed and was heading downstairs in my stocking feet. (Note: different house than previous scenario. This one had a full staircase, going straight down, ending in a tiled entry hall with my parents' bedroom to the immediate left and the front door straight ahead. This is important to know.) The steps are carpeted, and as I stepped on the second step from the top, my feet went out from under me and I fell back, landing on my ass and bumping all the way down the staircase, all 14 stairs. I picked up quite a bit of speed as I got closer to the bottom, and as I hit the bottom, my mother opened the door to her bedroom, just in time to see me shoot past, slide across the tile, and crash into the front door. To her credit, my mother did manage to ask me if I were okay while laughing hysterically (I was NOT - I cracked my tailbone).

Here's another one: I was living in Nashville, getting ready to go to Atlanta for the weekend. I was packing my suitcase, playing loud music and running back and forth between my bedroom and the bathroom. On the floor, just outside my bedroom door, was a good sized box filled with old clothes I was planning to donate. I had to step slightly to the right as I went out the door towards the bathroom so as to keep from running into the box and had been doing so for several weeks. But one time, ONE TIME, as I ran out of my room towards the bathroom, I didn't step to the right. Instead, I rammed my little toe on my left foot right into the box. My toe bent entirely the wrong way and I fell down in the hallway, pretty sure my toe had been severed (it had not). But it WAS broken, turning very black by the next day and making the wearing of shoes unbelievably miserable. But I soldiered on and continued on my trip to Atlanta, because I was just that stupid awesome.

There are more, but you get the idea.

This morning, with my daughter upstairs asleep and my husband off to work, I was bringing up plastic tubs of preschool files and books from the basement to take to school with me (back to school this week, getting the room ready for preschoolers to arrive after Labor Day). Our very old house has a very old wooden staircase that goes down to the basement. At the top of the stairs is a tiled landing, then there are two steep steps up on the right side of the landing that lead to the kitchen (to the left) and a hallway to the living room and front door (to the right). As I carried a tub of books up the basement stairs to take to the car, I didn't lift my leg high enough, caught the edge of my flip flop on the first tiled step, and fell down hard. HARD. Fortunately, the tub of books broke part of my fall. The steps are tile with metal strips along the edge, and I hit the edge of the top step with the side of my knee, the second step with the side of my shin, and I don't know what with the top of my foot, but it hurts like hell. I laid on the floor, crying and feeling sorry for myself and hoping I hadn't broken anything (apparently not, but I do have some dandy bruises and swelling and my leg hurts in three different places whether something is touching it or not). And I learned that Ruby is no Lassie, because she was there when I crashed to the ground, then poofed her tail and took off.

Worthless, but PRECIOUS!

This incident, in itself, is bad enough. But the night before, I was bending over, reaching into the puppy crate to pull out their food bowl, leaning on the edge of the bathtub for extra support (because I was thinking safety first), my hand on the folded bathmat that was draped over the side of the tub, when the bathmat took off across the edge of the tub, taking me with it and causing me to crash my shoulder into the puppy crate, scaring the puppies silly and causing them to run out of the room. (By the way, my husband and daughter were in the next room, heard the crash, and only hollered to me to see if I were okay [I mostly was] but otherwise didn't get up to check on me.)

I have no spectacular ending to this story, because I fear it hasn't ended yet. I will fall again. And run into something with a body part. Or have to go to the ER because I cut myself making a bat cage (a story for another day).

When I told my daughter I didn't know how to end this post, she gave me a suggestion, so I'll go with it.

"Emma is super cool."

The end.