Are you a klutz, too?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have been notorious for doing things that classify me as a klutz. Many a time have I tripped over a raised piece of cement I didn’t see, or falling backwards in a chair. I think it finally happened to the point that I will never lean backwards in a chair again.

Last night I was scooting my chair backwards (probably very poor judgement here) toward my dresser in attempt to grab the remote control for the TV to change the channel, and what happened? Well, you guessed it, the chair fell over, I hit my head on the dresser and I scraped my foot on my desk. My whole right foot is swollen and it bled for about an hour last night. It has me a little concerned; however, I will wait a few days to see if the condition of my foot improves, if not I’ll be scheduling a doctor’s appointment just to make sure everything is okay.

Anyone else experience something like this where your clumsiness just shines through?

2

things will just leap out of my hands. glasses, plates, plants, clothes, etc.

i usually try to catch them and that just doesn’t work well. most of the time.

i hope your foot and head are doing better.

3

Oh, yes. In fact, I have a favorite little story which I think brilliantly illustrates just how clumsy I am. I was moving into the dorm my first year of college. Among my stuff were twelve-packs of soda. I picked up one with each hand, using the little hole perforated in the top of the case for the purpose. I walked from the car toward the door of the building. There is a tiny rise in the sidewalk as you step under the overhang in front of the building, perhaps an inch. I tripped over this, fell, and ended up several feet from where I started. Several of my sodas sacrificed themselves, and I was vividly bruised down my left side, here and there, from shoulder to calf, for more than a week. I was so sore that for three days I couldn’t sleep, till I got the bright idea to take some pain pills before I went to bed.

No one who knew me was the least bit surprised at this occurrence.

At graduation this past December, I dropped my diploma frame and after I bent down to pick it up, I had to scurry across the floor in a highly undignified manner to catch up with my row.

4

Thanks, rocking chair. :slight_smile:

Ouch, Harimad-sol! I bet that hurt!

Here’s another klutz story for me… When I was a senior in high school, my drama class decided to put on a Melodrama, and I was one of the bad guys. I went to a small town high school so we didn’t have a theater to perform in, we just performed in our bandroom that we just made into a theater using some sheets and slabs of wood… There was a part in the play where the other bad guy and myself were to drag someone off stage that we just knocked out. We’re dragging… We’re dragging… We get behind the sheet designated as the “backstage area,” and I trip over the girl we had to drag back there, falling right against a cabinet in the backstage area, and this happened right in the gap between piano songs for the classic Melodrama feel, so everyone got to hear a very loud THUD! between music styles.

5

I’m not a klutz per se but I am accident prone. My sense of balance has always been a bit “off”. I’ll fall over if my center of balance starts going the wrong way and can’t correct in time!

6

Does being oftentimes unaware of your surroundings count as being a klutz? Yes?

Ok, ever seen that Far Side where the kid is going in the door (marked Gifted Program or somesuch) and it says “pull” and the kid is pushing?

I’ve done that.

Ironically, on the way to an honors class. Yes, really. And in front of my entire class. :smack:

I’ve done a lot of running into poles, too. I just don’t pay attention to where I am going very well. And I fell backwards in a chair during an emotional monologue at an AA meeting (my Stepmonster used to drag me to them, I don’t know why).

OH and the skin of my kneecaps are still 100% scar tissue from the many, many times I slipped in my dress shoes in a parking lot (done when I was a youngster).

7

I’m gonna share mine while waiting for elenfair to arrive and tell y’all my favorite klutz story EVAH.

Most painful:
The last house I lived in before Hurricane Andrew transferred me out of SoFlo was a 1950s poured concrete steel truss bomb shelter. With windows. One morning while leaving my bedroom to refill my coffee cup I realized I had left said coffeecup on my nightstand. I turned around to retrieve it while in the doorway between the bedroom and living room of that poured concrete stel truss bomb shelter of a house and jammed my toe in to that goddamned wall, dropping (and shattering) my coffee cup.

I’m tough. I have a high pain tolerance. I’ll be fine.

Later that afternoon I eased my poor toe into my hard plastic-toed boots (no steel-toes when you work with trons, y’see) I thought it might not be a very good idea. But I’m tough and sailor on. A couple of hours later I lifted a 100 pound shielded high speed printer off of its pos and onto a wheeled cart to take it into the Mat Shop for a PM. The cart rolled. Ever notice that your little toe is significantly shorter than the rest of them? Did you know that neither steel- nor plastic- toed boots cover it? Did you know that you can go from vertical and happy to horizontal and crying in 0.00002 seconds flat?

Most embarrassing:
Freshman year, running a little late for class. After descending the first half-flight of stairs I rounded the U-turn and spotted one of the senior BMOCs leaning casually against the lockers waiting for his girlfriend. I casually ignored him and slowly descended all the remaining steps but the last, instead falling ignomiously face first at the feet of BMOC.

Weirdest:
Reached for the handle of the refrigerator door. Missed it. Fell on my ass. The hell?

8

Where to start. Where to start…

I have been a certified klutz since childhood. A quick search of the boards will reveal some of my adventures… but chique’s favourite story will forever be this one…

I was but a wee child. My tendency to hurt myself was already legendary. The children’s hospital staff knew me by name.

Once, after coming in for some injury, a new young intern got a hold of my file. He was concerned about the… thickness of it… and the fact that my parents had never been investigated o’er it all. The nursing staff kept saying, “No, honest, we know these guys. It’s the child.” Still, he wasn’t sure.

As we were walking out of the ER, I turned to wave at the nurses, promptly slipped on the wet floor (didn’t see the placard), fell back and split my head open on an IV stand.

All I heard as the nurses rushed my way was, from the nurses’ station, “See, we TOLD you it was the child…”

The other classic Elly Injures Herself with Panache story is the story of how I fractured my skull on a door for the physically handicapped. Way up there with being hit by a handi-bus, I suppose (haven’t done that yet, but give me time.)

9

Oh my god, Elly. You are the queen. However, I think I might earn a spot in your ladies in waiting.

I once stepped on a rake.

10

I’m not sure I can top Elenfair here, but before I read her post I was pretty sure I could top anyone else’s klutziness.

You’re going to have to use your visualization skills for this one. In my right hand, I have a pot of hot, undrained, boiled noodles. On the left side of the sink is a dish drainer which is currently holding the colander. With my left hand, I reach across my body to the dish drain and grab the colander, and in the process I knock a glass out of the dish drainer. I attempt to stop the glass from falling by getting my right elbow under it and lifting - and in the process, I pour boiling hot water UP my arm.

Try explaining to the ER staff how you boiled your own armpit.

11

:smack:

If you’re having trouble with that visualization, it’s because the dish drainer was on the RIGHT side of the sink.

:smack: :smack: :smack:

ow.

12

Wow. About the worst klutz accident that I’ve had in recent years was… hmm. The building that I used to work in has wide carpeted stairs leading down to the glass exit door a few feet away, one of those dealies with the pushbar across the middle.

So I’m running late for my carpool home, and thunder down the stairs, keeping one hand about an inch above the rail (from bitter experience falling down concrete stairs as a child). This type of rapid egress usually means I’m sliding down the outside edges of each step, yeah?

Unfortunately, my foot slipped just that bit too far on the last section of steps, and I ended up losing my balance and went over backward. My hand had automatically clamped on the rail, so my feet kept going down without me to the ground floor. The stuffed workbag I had slung over a shoulder also kept going, swinging in an arc. The rest of me, off balance, involuntarily followed the bag.

Somehow or other I managed to land on my feet and avoid dislocating my shoulder. However, thanks to the laws of physics, I ended up staggering forward and slamming bodily into the glass door. Fortunately the pushbar clicked when I hit, so I was hanging onto the bar as the door swung open instead of cracking through the glass.

When I picked myself up, I didn’t even bother shaking myself off and burned shoe rubber out of there on the way to the bus stop. A group of devs were standing to one side of the staircase and witnessed the whole thing. I’ve wondered sometimes what they thought of this. :slight_smile:

Or there’s the time I was a teenager attending services at my Deaf church, held in a small chapel. I dropped my program and bent down to get it. Miscalculated the clearance between me and the pew in front.

The THUD as my forehead hit was felt by the nice old ladies in the pew two rows in front of me and across the aisle. I got my program and straightened, blinking at the people around me who were staring. Didn’t even bruise, but I’m told it sounded extremely nasty.

Suffice it to say, I have a pretty high pain threshhold when it comes to things like bumping or bruising myself.

13

When I’m not playing tennis, yeah, most of the time. I’ve got a freaky talent for getting in people’s way. Wherever I stand, someone’s going to want to walk right through there within a couple of seconds.

14

Hi my name is **Anaamika ** and I am a klutz.

I’ve worked all my life to remedy this, and have learned to move slowly and carefully most of the time. I still spill something major about once a month.

I have to be very careful about doing “cool” things, like spinning around quickly and stalking off. There will always be a wall behind me I’d forgotten about, or I’ll knock a drink out of someone’s hand.

I have been known to drink and miss my mouth.

I’ve fallen *up * the stairs in my apartment as well as down.

Such is life!

15

This made me laugh so hard it brought tears to my eyes.

That you were in a DEAF church and the people who turned had to actually FEEL the vibration of you hitting your head on the pew makes me wonder why you weren’t knocked completely unconscious!

16

After a certain number of years, all the little incidents start to blur together. There are just too many for any one to stand out in my mind.

However…

I used to work in a paint store that had a framing shop in it. I expressed interest, so I got designated to be the new framer. Sounded great. I get to work with customers, help them pick out frames, order the framestock, and make and build the frames. So far, peachy keen.

It did not occur to me until I was well into it that this means I was to be issued a glass cutter. Glass. Cutting.

Fortunately, the rest of the staff left me alone in my little framing room in the back and so they didn’t hear me frequently mutter “Don’t bleed on the artwork… don’t bleed on the artwork…”

17

Hi Anaamika I’m a klutz too.

I have to second your comment about learning to move slowly and carefully most of the time. Many people actually think that I’m gracefull because of how I move. I hate to shatter their illusions that it’s only when I’m paying attention.

I’ve always been big (over 6’ with broad shoulders since I was 13) but somehow my brain has never figured that out. It seems like I am always walking into posts, walls, or corners that I thought I should have missed. I just bounce off the obstruction, make a comment “Oh a wall. Note - should avoid that.” and keep going. It’s not uncommon for Mrs Stone to find a bruise or scrape on me and ask what happened and I realise I have no idea when or how I got it.

18

I’ve done both of these.

I bruised my shin very badly the time I fell up the stairs. A week later, it was still hurting when I walked. I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled, so I decided to have them take a look at it. I had to explain what had happened, which was just a bit embarrassing…

That too. I’m generally pretty unaware of my surroundings, so I guess I am a klutz. I get the bruises and cuts that I don’t know when or how I got them, too.

19

More stories from Klutzdom…

The Burn. My mother and father had, when I was a young teen, one of the first bread machines on the market. It had a handy dandy metal basket in which the bread was baked. Said basket had a metal handle. When my mother pulled out a loaf, upturned the basket and put the blasted damned hot metal thing into the empty sink, I heard a faint “tssss”. This should have alerted me that the handle was, in fact, bloody hot. My mother turned to me and said, “Don’t touch that, I just pulled it out, it’s really hot.” Brain fails to engage. I reach for the basket handle, pick up the basket and say, “What, this?” … promptly burning a bright raid straight line across my fingers. Klutzdom? No. Pure stupidity at that point. About two years ago, I repeated something like that - but it was with a convection oven, pulling out a baking sheet full of cookies. A small bit of my arm (near the elbow) connected with the inside wall of the oven. My brain didn’t register what had happened until I could smell… burning… OW! That resulted in a visit to the doc to cut away dead skin and patch up the arm…

…

I broke my nose, as a child, on an automatic sliding door at a hardware store (you know, the ones with the sensors). The reason? It was the exit door. I didn’t take the time to read. I just walked into it head first.

Twice. I did it again about two months after the first incident.

…

The door incident is probably the ultimate Elly Classic. I was on my way to pick up some student evaluation forms from a fellow teacher’s office at Ottawa U. I was walking through a pseudo-skyway between two buildings (where the student radio station is, for those who know the campus)… The two buildings are separated by two sets of heavy fire-wall type doors.

So far, so good. I crossed the first set without incident. I was powering along to the second door, which was being held open by the mechanism for the handicapped. The door was open towards me. As I was nearing the Door Of Doom, I heard the click of the mechanism release the door. These being firewall doors, the mechanism releases them, there’s a second delay, and then they practically slam shut.

Just as the door began to swing shut, I walked right into it, sharp edge right into my forehead.

When I came to, I realised I had some pretty serious pain going on. Got the papers from my coworker, who was a little concerned about the fact I was kind of… erm… pale… and… appeared to have wet myself.

Eventually made it to the campus clinic with an egg growing on my forehead (or is that egg on my face?) Took me a while to convince the staff that no, no one had done this to me. A door, for the handicapped, had come out and jumped me.

For a couple years after that, they refered to me as “La Fille De La Porte!” (the girl of the door). Hardee har har.

…

A quick search of the boards’ archives will reveal some stories about my acrobatics while moving a bookcase with my dad (who, instead of helping me out when the rug slipped from under my feet on the hardwood floors laughed hysterically at my glorious arabesque), and the story of how the cast iron garden furniture in my mother’s back yard bit me in the forehead as I was reaching down (vigorously!) to pick up the family dog’s stuffed toys to bring them inside.

Kill me now. Lord knows that everything around me is trying to.

(Two days ago, I was sitting on the floor finishing up a bumper pad for my puppy’s crate when the phone rang upstairs. I tried to get up, and failed. Result? Strained calf which should take, oh, 3-6 weeks to heal.)

Kids, don’t try any of this at home, m’kay?

20

I’m pretty klutzy, although not as spectacularly as others in the thread. My regular thing is misjudging distances. On an at least monthly basis I crack my shoulder on my door frame and I don’t think a fortnight has ever gone by in my life without me knocking over a drink. It’s weird – I can in fact be sorta graceful (for a fat guy), but only some of the time.

–Cliffy