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Coordination? Not so much.

2004-02-24 - 3:48 p.m.

Last night I walked into the pointy corner of my banister. I swear I heard the whole thing creak as I drove my full weight forward with my hip. If that collision had been a punch or a softball-bat swing, I would, in fact, have been very proud of myself. As it is, not so much. Today I�m sporting a bruise (actually, I was sporting it less than a minute after the fact) which is currently too lightly coloured to elicit much sympathy but will turn into a lurid rainbow once it�s actually ceased to hurt*.

I am not so good with cornering, you see. I may notice something in my path but I�m not good at judging where I am in relation to it. I think I�m in the clear and then, wham, clip myself on it. It�s usually more of a glancing blow though and I rarely walk straight into anything like I did last night. My lack of coordination is legendary amongst those who know me and with this journal being online and all, well, that circle of legendary-ness (legendarity? just plain legend?) may grow. I now have endless opportunity to post my foibles.

It�s fortunate that I have no zest for dangerous pursuits. Downhill skiing, skating, racing anything, flinging myself from heights and aiming for a soft landing spot, these are things which terrify me. I was the kid that wouldn�t jump into the hay mow or off the playhouse into a big pile of snow. Maybe I was a bit chicken but I knew my limitations.

In many ways though, I consider myself lucky. Accidents caused by my clumsiness, while numerous and often silly, have always been superficial and I�ve never had to get stitches or a cast. There is almost always a way for things to be much worse. For example, last night I hit my hip and yes, it hurt, but if I�d been turned on a slightly different angle it would have been my soft belly driving into that solid, pointy post. I got t-boned on my bicycle by a car in a parking lot once, and my chain got knocked off from the force of the impact, but the timing was such that they hit my pedal. If that pedal had been at another point on the circle, down instead of up, it would have been my leg that absorbed the impact. So I guess that, while it may not be terribly fortunate to get into the minor scrapes I do, I�m very lucky that the damage is always so minor compared to what it could be.

Hm. Does this make me a glass-half-full person? I�ve never been able to answer that question when it�s been posed to me.

* It�s always annoyed me that when I actually am in pain I don�t really have anything to show to prove it and so end up looking like a huge wimp. This is made up for later when it doesn�t actually hurt but I have huge purple and yellow marks to brandish under the nose of the previously unsympathetic person and say �See? I told you that it hurt,� and then leave the Treat me like a whiner eh? You unsympathetic bastard! unsaid. Of course, I no longer have to milk this sort of situation as I married a man wise enough to believe me in the first place when I say I�ve hurt myself, and would never make me go walking outside in the winter for hours on a broken toe, unlike someone from my past who shall remain nameless. But I digress...

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