"The Klutz"

I come from a long illustrious line...

of Klutzes.

My Mom's klutziness was, and still is, legendary. To this day she can more often than not be found with a brace, crutches, splint, cast or other miscellaneous sign of injury. When I get a phone call from her on my cell phone, it's become sort of a game for myself to quickly guess what she's injured now. I get bonus points when I get both the body part, and injury type. Kind of like a macabre game of Clue. "Mom, on the leg, with an open fracture". I'm actually pretty good at it.

This apple didn't fall too far from the tree. As much as my Mom always just seems to be hurt somehow, I usually manage to hurt myself in new and creative ways. Just a week before my wedding, I partially fell through a deck backwards. The resulting injury was so bad the, *ahem*, "fluff" in the upper part of my thigh is still somewhat misshapen, kind of like a pillow that's had all of its stuffing pushed to one end. It made our first dance at the wedding more resemble a drunken zombie waltz. You get the drift.

A friend of mine who also suffers from "The Klutz", says that one day she expects they'll find her broken body in an empty room and it'll be a big mystery how she died with nothing to trip over or hurt herself on.

Only I know she's only partially joking.

I made the mistake about a month ago, when my husband was musing over my penchant for creative injury, of declaring that I hadn't hurt myself in AGES, THANKYOUVERYMUCH. I was a little indignant.

The Gods of Black Humor surely heard me that day.

A couple weeks later, my husband was snoozing on the couch and it was getting late, so I decided to do the proactive Mom thing (it happens) and get my childrens lunches ready for school the next day.

Now, let me back up a bit.

It was PFD time up here a few weeks ago. For those that don't speak Alaskan, that means Permanent Fund Dividend. That legendary money that the state gives us just because we're brave enough to live here. It's more complicated than that... having to do with oil revenues and yadda yadda, but all I've ever needed to know is that every year, in October, the state gives us money. Yay us!

The reality is... your car and every major appliance in your house also knows this money is coming, and will break down the week before, causing your dreams of spending the cash on a snow machine or tropical vacation down the toilet.

This year, our freezer decided to quit, leaving us using an old freezer that was left behind by the previous owner. The week before PFDs the door literally fell off this freezer. My husband warned me not to get into it unless absolutely necessary.

Feeding the kids is necessary, right?

So I go out to grab some frozen burritos out of said broken freezer, and as I'm trying to get the door back onto the front, it slips out of my hands and directly onto my toe. Hard.

I don't remember much else from this point, except the strange sound of an airhorn that filled the room. It was only later I realized that was me.

Needless to say, there was blood and carnage. And pain.... oh the pain! I limped to the clinic the next morning bright and early, and was chastised for not coming in that night. "If you had come in LAST NIGHT, I could have done more for you, but as it is...". Well, he did plenty, including burning a hole in my toenail to "relieve the pressure". I'm still not sure if that was necessary or punative.

Burning toenail is an interesting smell... lemmetellya.

I thought about taking a picture of my toe right after it happened, but between the thought that the world really didn't need to see that, and just forgetting to do it, I never did. It's been two weeks and I'm getting around just fine, but it still looks a little bit like a steak you've forgotten for several years in the back of the fridge.

That's a nice image to go with your Wheaties this morning, no?

So my poor poor girls. They have inherited "The Klutz". At any given time, you can guarantee that one or the other of them is going to be injured. Usually doing something inane... like, walking up the stairs. Who falls walking UP the stairs?!? Well, look no more. We do.

Last night, we are at my daughters TaeKwonDo class, and she is just getting into the warm up routine. I turn my head to talk to my other daughter and next thing I know someone is trying to get my attention. Well, it seems that my daughter didn't see the 6 foot something boy that was barrelling down her path like a semi-truck and collided with him, jamming her knee into his. The result was another trip to the clinic, xrays later today, and her hobbling around on crutches. I expect it's just very bruised, but we should find out more later today.

My husband is threatening to throw us all in a rubber room so that we can quit hurting ourselves.

I tell him he underestimates our heritage and creativity.