Bumps and Bruises

If you look in the dictionary under "klutz" you might find my picture.  If there's something for me to trip, stub my toe, bump my head, bang a knee/shin, fall, get caught, or scratch myself on, I will do it.  More often than not, that "something" seems to be nothing more than air.

When I was a teenager I worked at a summer camp where I was outdoors all day.  This was dangerous.  I seemed to spend entire summers falling on my butt, scraping my legs, hands and arms, getting stung by bees (of which I am very allergic), getting caught in blackberry bushes, and just generally hurting myself.  I might have used more band-aids than all of our campers combined.  The other counselors frequently had to practice their first-aid skills on me.

My parents have a set of stairs in their house that I am constantly falling up.  Maybe I run up them too fast, but my feet are constantly getting caught and I fall face first.  Usually nobody sees me do this because the stairs are in the back of the house.  Luckily I've only fallen down the stairs twice.

I was walking through Target once and after tripping twice in one minute, my friend started counting.  I tripped three more times within five minutes.

My T.I. in boot camp always yelled at me for dragging my feet.  Apparently I didn't lift up my feet enough when walking and my boots would leave black scuffs all over the floor in our dormitory.  He would walk into the dorm and yell "AQUINO!  PICK UP YOUR DAMN FEET!"  After I graduated he made me wax and polish the floors in the whole dorm by myself.  This might be why I stumbling all the time, but I think there are tiny, invisible gnomes running around my feet tripping me up.

On Monday my klutzy-ness reached an all-time high.  Try not to laugh when you read this... I was getting out of the shower, and in an effort to NOT trip on the shower curtain, I was ATTACKED by the towel rack.  It smacked me right on my head, just above my right eye.  When I went to bed that night I had a pretty big knot on my noggin.  Yesterday it hurt, but the swelling was gone.  Today I woke up and it hurts to move anything on the right side of my face.  My boss thought this was really funny, and when I told him not to make me laugh because it hurt, he sent me this in an email:

"Beware of the..."

And of course I started laughing, which only made my head hurt more.  Maybe I should invest in a pillow hat for some cushioning around my dome...