My daughter’s preschool had a “Winter Olympics” last week that was tons of fun and fraught with all kinds of events that sound very dangerous when explaining them over the phone to grandparents (“Well you see, they were standing on a chair… and then jumping off, onto this padded wedge, to pretend they were doing ski jumps… then they were running down a hallway with this sled….”) and yet there were no injuries.
Meanwhile, I merely walked down to our basement, and somehow managed to slip and left leg went forward, right leg went backwards, but with the knee bent behind me, shoulder somehow wrenched behind me, left elbow scraping against the wall and jamming a finger somewhere along the way. Yes, this would be why my nickname in college was “Grace” as in “full of…”
My shoulder only hurts when I breathe, raise my arm, or lean on it. But my pride is wounded even more deeply. After two weeks of watching amazing feats of agility (c’mon — Apolo Ohno leaping over crashing skaters!), I still can’t manage a set of stairs without the occasional wipeout. Perhaps I should at least be grateful that my secret crush, Bob Costas, isn’t around for a blow-by-blow commentary with instant video replay or slo-mo playback complete with circles and arrows to show where everything went oh, so critically wrong. (“Now you see here, this is where your foot slid just a little too far, and there you go — you can see the panic cross your face right HERE!”)
This is when I decided that what I need is a Klutz Olympics. Yes, this would be a sporting event at which I could surely excel. I have fallen down more flights of stairs in more exciting ways than anyone I’ve known. Seriously. I once fell down a flight of stairs while holding a can of Coke and didn’t spill a drop AND landed with my legs crossed in a very ladylike fashion. There were witnesses, I swear. I went rock climbing in college, repelled down a small cliff, unscathed, then managed to injure myself just walking on the path back to the car. Skydiving? Not a problem. Stepping off a curb, I broke my ankle.
JavaDad would make a worthy opponent in the Klutz Olympics. He seems to find it almost impossible to go through our kitchen without banging his head on something. Or stubbing his toe. But I’ve never seen him trip UP the stairs. So I think I can go for the gold.
