Thursday 30 August 2007

grace, I think

I was always the clumsy one in my group of friends in high school. I like to think it was because I had so much going on in my head at the time,(I was a poet! Thinking poetical thoughts! And about that hot junior! And....stuff!) but in reality I rushed through everything and so scored some really incredible pratfalls.

I remember being the only person not drinking at an outdoor party and falling down. (Okay, it was all ice and we were partying on the surface of a frozen lake. But still, THE ONLY ONE TO FALL DOWN.)

Graduation Day my co-marcher and I had started out when I noticed she was gripping my hand so hard she was leaving welts on it. 'Leggo! Are you nervous?' I said, trying to pull my hand away. She shook her beautifully made-up head at me and hissed 'No, Jessica. I am holding your hand because if you go down the football team (who were right behind us) will step on you.'

I once put my contacts in and scratched myself in the eye so badly I had to wear an eye-patch. Of course, I would do that right before what are now refered to as the 'Pirate Family Pictures' were taken. Graceful to the end.

Thankfully, after a few years I seemed to outgrow most of that. Oh, I still manage some spectacular idiotstick stuff (skewering my hand and jumping full force onto a bit of broken glass come to mind) but it's not an occupational hazard to be near me anymore.

Or maybe it is. Nature does abhor a vacuum. Now it's after B.

B has been sawing down trees in our back forty. He wants to have the logs planed and shaped (yes, and I know that's not the actual term for it...milled? whatever) and use the boards to build things. Last night I took the two friskies and went into the woods. For exercise, y'know. We watched as B toppled a few trees and cut the limbs off, the kids ran all over and looked at things, it was fun.


B was wearing his safety helmet with the face shield pulled down. He went past a tree and the branch flashed back under the face shield and knocked him in the eye just hard enough to bug him. His eye wasn't tearing up, wasn't irritated, didn't hurt - just a little double vision - until about three hours later, when it wasn't getting any better. Into town we went, where the doc told him to take it easy for the next few days and blink a lot*, and now....well, I'm not enjoying the lumbering off-kilter person who squints at me and occasionally walks into the kitchen door so much.

It's giving me some distressingly familiar flashbacks.

I think I'm going to start calling him Grace.




*It wasn't patched. No special meds. Obviously not a horrendously big deal. Just owie. Therefore, I get to poke fun.

11 comments:

jAMiE said...

Lol...sounds like a good name for him.

Angewl said...

Being clumsy, I have no room to comment. lol

Nice nickname, though. lol

His Office, My Studio said...

Grace needs to stay out of trees. Wish him well for me and you both be careful.

velcro said...

my father and my uncle are similarly gracefully challenged, and have an ongoing competition to see who has scored the most injuries.

hope your Grace stops walking into doors soon!

Mediocre Housewife said...

You mean I was supposed to have outgrown the whole clumsiness thing? I guess I didn't get the memo...

You must scan and post the pirate pictures when you get a chance!! ;)

Caro said...

If the clumsy is catching, my family is in serious trouble.

Anonymous said...

I always thought I was clumsy until I met my MIL. She rivals you.

Hope the eyeball heals quickly.

ancient one said...

I'm the old lady everyone will remember at the family reunions... The one that spilled a full 16 ounce cup of tea on her white (thin) pants and wore a towel around her waist for the rest of the festivities. That happened at my husband's reunion.

I'm the one everyone will remember who dropped the chocolate pie right at the door as she came in. That happened at my own family reunion. Well someone has to be the crazy relative...Guess it's me!!

KPB said...

I used to fall down all the time. Miss corners. Go over on my ankles. Walk into doors. Drop cups of tea for no reason except some weird inexplicable arm jolt. Cut myself with knives, on broken glass, on the plastic lid of a tub of dip and so on and so forth. In Year 7 (first year of high school) I slipped in the mud and lodged a steel post in my foot. Four days off the crutches I fell off a chair in the classroom and cut open my eyebrow. And so on and on it goes. Glasses went some way to lessening the incidents but only just.
And my dad just landed himself in hospital with a few broken ribs after having an altercation with a tree.

kimmyk said...

i see patients all the time who have scratched their corneas from doing yard work etc. Horrible pain. Bummer. Hope he's feeling better. The doctor should have given him drops and not just told him to blink alot. That's very odd.

A said...

I'm really not laughing at "pirate family pictures" really...

o.k. I am. a little.

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