As a child, my mother would schlepp me back and forth once a week to ballet classes, which sadly turned out to be a complete waste of money. Graceful, I am not.
First of all, I run like I am doing an imitation of Jerry Lewis in the Nutty Professor , with arms and legs flailing. And that is how I broke my toe...twice. Not the big toe, not even the little end toe, but the little piggie that had none.
The first time is a dim childhood memory, involving cousins who were chasing me and a really, really well-made dining room chair (darn Amish). The second time was more recent and involved a door frame which jumped in front of me, I swear. One minute it was quietly sitting there doing its job, and the next it was trying to maim me as I ran for the phone (I don't actually remember who was on the other end, but I'm pretty sure they learned some new and creative uses for several four-letter words--I'm hoping it was a solicitor).
Then there was the time I cut off the tip of my finger while trying to slice potatoes with a mandolin. Aggravated with the way the potato kept slipping out from under the finger guard (duh--guard), I decided to do without it. Not a good decision, which I realized the minute I saw a pinkish piece of potato on the cutting board surrounded by a mysterious red liquid. Ewww, oh and ouch too! (Now I know why manufacturers feel it necessary to put seemingly obvious directions on things like the "Do Not Boil" on my plastic butter dish).
And most recently, I gave myself several lovely contusions on my leg by walking into an open drawer. In my defense, this one was not my fault. Tim had pulled out the drawer a few minutes before and failed to push it back in and, honestly, after twenty-eight years, does he not know that I can't be trusted not to kill myself on inanimate objects with protruding parts (or inanimate objects without protruding parts)? I am, after all, my mother's daughter, and this was the woman who daily stubbed her toes and banged up her shins by walking into a dishwasher that had not changed location in fifteen years. Hellooooooo.
While I normally am only a danger to myself, this week I decided to branch out and try to injure an innocent bystander.
It all started out innocuously enough in yoga class where we were doing twists. The teacher was not happy enough that we were contorting ourselves into something resembling a cross between a pretzel and a corkscrew, she actually wanted us to roll over onto the floor and then back up like huge Weeble dolls while keeping the twist!
"Let gravity just pull you down," she encouraged.
Okay. And what is going to pull me back up? A crane, perhaps?
"Just let your arms and legs flow naturally where they want to go," she offered, when it became clear that this was not going to work out quite as she had planned. (I believe her first clue was when most of us lay gasping on the floor like beached whales, but I could be wrong.)
And so I let my legs flow. Unfortunately, they happened to flow right into the head of the woman next to me.
Luckily for her, she bobbed just at the moment I weaved and we averted a trip to the emergency room (who knew Yoga was a contact sport?). Although she forgave me, I noticed she did place her mat at the opposite end of the room the next time we had class. Probably for the best.
When I told Tim this story, he was not really surprised, just grateful that it wasn't him.
Maybe one more year of ballet would have made a difference. Or not.
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