Ah yes, that reminds me of one of the times we moved, which consists of Papa Tiger heading off to the new job, leaving me behind to take care of all the packing, storing, and transporting of stuff, selling and buying of houses, etc. By the time I rejoined him, he was exceedingly grateful that I had the passport stamps to prove that I’d been 6,000 miles away from him when I collected all the bruises, or he might still be trying to explain them to the authorities.
Papa Tiger also loves to harass me for my orthopedic appliance collection. Which consists of: aircasts for sprained ankles (one for each ankle), a large knee brace, a smaller neoprene knee brace, two back braces, a whole collection of wrist supports/splints for sprains/strains/carpal tunnel, thumb splints, two canes, and two pairs of crutches, one complete with moving stickers. Oh, yes, and two knee-high “boots” for more severe ankle injuries, the $150 kind. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but everything has been well used and re-used so I see no point in getting rid of any of it since I know I’ll need it again…
We live in a tri-level, with the front door right next to the top & bottom levels - the top level overhangs the bottom by about 6-8 inches.
Sometime last summer, I leaned down to water the flowers by the front stoop and in standing back up, banged the top of my head on the overhang just hard enough to hurt & make me swear.
I walked inside, muttering under my breath & Mr. Pol asks me what’s wrong?
“I hit my head on the house!”
After the guffaws & giggles subside - he says “you know I wouldn’t have laughed if you were really hurt or bleeding… right?”
My biggest problem is walls, which I blame on the fact that our office has narrower-than-normal hallways. If I’m walking down the hall with a coworker and chatting, it’s almost a sure thing that I’ll run into the wall (I can sometimes do this all by myself with no coworker to distract me).
My other trick is trying to run off the treadmill at the gym—when the TV is going and there’s something interesting on, I have a tendency to end up stepping on the non-moving part of the treadmill.
Forget wearing white—I just know I’m going to wear food/drink by the end of the day. The day has not officially begun until I’ve spilled something on myself. This thread makes me really glad I don’t have a car, as I see there are unparelleled opportunities for injury lurking there.
My car’s doorframe and my head are now best friends. I’ve been driving that car for 7 years, you’d think they’d have gotten sick of each other and quit arranging impromptu collisions quite so often…
Bruises don’t even phase me any more. I rarely question where they came from.
I routinely ski down stairs and have done myself permanent damage doing so. Also developed the occasional fairly entertaining bruises on my posterior as a result.
I also like to fall up stairs. Probably a side effect of the same failure-to-lift-foot-high-enough syndrome that caused me to trip while stepping up on a curb. That episode caused me to frantically run in an attempt to get my feet back under me… up the sidewalk, down the other side of the curb (narrow divider in a parking lot), and splat face-down on the asphalt. Breaking an elbow and chipping a front tooth. I felt somewhat better when I realized I’d injured myself in the exact same way a colleague had 6 months earlier, except she tripped over a sidewalk crack (no marauding curbs for her) and actually succeeded in breaking off one of her front teeth.
And I often “forget” where my feet are and have to literally stop, look down, and make sure I’m not about to fall up/down some surface. Failure to do so has caused injuries (like the time I nearly broke a toe trying to walk down a nonexistent step at the bottom of the staircase).
Ankles turn suddenly w/o warning, which is mostly embarassing except when carrying an infant (did that with both of them, scared the cr*p out of me) or scurrying down an escalator and taking a pratfall in front of several hundred morning commuters.
It runs in the family, too. Papa Zappa sprained his ankle last winter stepping down off a curb in a parking lot. Admittedly, it had snowed, but he had to confess there was no snow anywhere near where the sprain occurred. He was leaving a Zany Brainy, where he’d gone to look for a blimp as recommended by Scylla.
My mom always said I can trip over air bubbles. I was probably a teenager before I realized that was a joke. Mostly.
I went to France/Italy with a school trip in high school. We had breakfast in a cellar in the hotel in Paris. It’d been raining, and I take the steps like I normally do… only to fall onto my butt and go down the last four or five steps that way. I broke my tail bone, and had to endure the rest of the trip (all bus). It was miserable. It took about six years to completely heal, too. And what can you do for a broken butt, really?
I also have had a problem with the new coffee table we have in the living room. It’s just the right height to get me in the soft part of the knee. I think it’s out to destroy me…
Y’know what’s even better? When you drop the soap from shoulder height, and it falls straight down perfectly in line with the wall of the tub so it slides down, follows the curve to zip across the bottom, and then curves back up to launch itself into the air and hit you in the nuts.
Not that I’ve done this at least twice or anything.
Also: Years ago, I was playing Trivial Pursuit with my brother and stepmother. My brother rolled the die and somehow bumped the board so our pieces shifted a couple of inches. “Clumsy,” I said, and knocked the box with the question cards off the arm of the sofa and spilled them across the living room floor.
I managed to trip while going up concrete steps, and instead of pulling out my hands to break the fall, I landed flat on my face. Had very nice grazing/bruising on one cheekbone.
Slipped on ice a few weeks ago, and instead of landing flat on my face (which, given that it was a flat surface, probably wouldn’t have been so bad), I slipped with one foot under the other, and broke my ankle. I just had the cast removed.
Wobbled in my shoes and landed flat on my face while in the middle of a busy airport terminal. Fortunately, I didn’t injure anything that time, other than my pride.
It snowed here on Tuesday. It rained yesterday. I thought it would be safe to go out, after all, the roads were clear. I kissed the driveway 3 times. The first time, I slipped, landed on my knees. I thought, “Ok, this isn’t so bad,” but actually, I wasn’t finished. I caught myself by flinging my hands into 6" of slush. Now on hands and knees, I thought “It could be worse.” Then I was flat on my face, head under 6" of slush. I’m surprised I didn’t drown.
By the end of the day, I just stayed in the wet clothes. Hey, I might have had to go outside again. It was either that, or toss the basket of clean laundry out into the snow.