I come by my clumsiness honestly: I inherited it from my mother’s faulty genes.
She gets in the most amazing predicaments, some life-threatening, but all strangely hilarious.
Once, she glued herself to the mailbox while trying to apply new numbers with SuperGlue. It was one of those moments when one wishes that a CamCorder was handy, because America’s Funniest Home Videos still gives out those cash prizes. I will never forget, as long as I live, hearing my mother bellowing for help. Neighbors were leaning out their windows, helplessly weeping with laughter. I, myself, was paralyzed with mirth as she yanked her wrist with the other hand, fruitlessly trying to pull herself free. My mom sure is a colorful cusser, I’ll tell you!
She’s electrocuted herself twice, and lived to tell the tale. Once, it was because the cord on a mixer came out of the machine as she was making cake batter. It plopped into the mixture, and, by her words, “without thinking” she popped it into her mouth to lick off the batter. It threw her across the kitchen into a wall.
The second time, she hit a metal ladder against a threadbare power line. We kept the ladder, an object of awe. Two inches deep, a section was burned away by the electricity. My grandmother found her behind the house, sitting dazed in the grass.
Luckily, I must have gotten another gene from my father, what I call the Grace-Under-Fire gene. Essentially, it means that I can do something incredibly clumsy, but not break the objects around me, like the time I fell down a flight of stairs at the museum in which I work, but managed not to break the artifact I was carrying. I can also fall face-first onto the floor, but manage to keep a cake I am carrying aloft and unharmed.
However, the objects unfortunate enough to share my space often bear the brunt of my faulty genes. Like my mother, I cannot own glassware. Eventually, every glass gets broken. Thank goodness for Correll Wear, or I wouldn’t be able to have plates, either. I drop everything I touch, which is bad news for the infants in my family. (I’ve only dropped one, and that’s because I forgot he was laying on my lap when I stood up.)
I run into walls, and windows. When my museum put up a glass wall last year in a new building, bets were taken among my co-workers for the Full-Tilt-Boogie Pool-- how many times Lissa would crash into the wall within the first year while strolling blithely along. This was subsequent to the How Many Times Will She Smash Her Fingers In the Door pool and the Did She Trip Over the Rug AGAIN? pool. My co-workers know to listen for an “I’m okay!” whenever they hear a terrific crash. It’ll just be me again, risking life and limb trying to walk upstairs to the vaults while carrying a box.
.
:smack: