The World Book of Records

I need to get in touch with the Guinness World Book of Records to see if I qualify as the World's Clumsiest person.

I am so clumsy it is terrifying. If something can be dropped, I will drop it. I dropped a tiny little glass bunny into the sink (and therefore into the garbage disposal) which would have had terrible results. So I reached down into the garbage disposal and fished around until I found it, scraping and bruising my hand and, for a few minutes, since I was holding the little bunny, couldn't get my hand back out. I was just praying that Bern wouldn't find me with my hand stuck in the garbage disposal--which is probably why I got the scrapes and bruises.

If something can be tripped over, I will trip over it. We have a rag rug on the back porch and it froze during the recent cold spell so that a little piece of it stuck up and I tripped over it every time I went outside. But now, with the rug flat and thawed, I still trip over it every time I go outside.

And talk about bumping into things! I am the champ at bumping into things. I always have a couple of bumps or blue spots on my body from bumping into things. I bumped into the piano at Emmanuel Church in Killingworth a few weeks ago and still as a little blue where I hit it. That piano has always been in the same place--it didn't move in my way--I simply stumbled against it, probably tripping over the century old + hardwood floors.

Now comes the 'hitting your head on stuff' part of my claim for the world record books. I hit my head on something almost daily, even stuff you should never hit your head on. And when I don't hit my head, like in our basement where the washer and dryer are, I'm always ducking under the heat pipes. I must look like one of those birds you can get to dunk their heads into a glass of water. I flinch when I'm still several feet from the pipes. And today I realized there is a new thing to hit my head on--our kitchen renovation ended up with getting a new cabinet hung above where we keep the food for the dog and cat. I bent down to get the dog food to feed Bela dinner and almost hit my head. I will, eventually, hit my head on that cabinet though I know it is there. I hit my head on things that are not even at head level. I hit my head the other day on my steering wheel when I reached into the front seat of my car to turn off the motor. I'd gotten out of the car without turning off the motor and taking out the key, which I do more than you would expect--just jump out and start away when I realize the key is in the ignition and on.

I'd like to claim all this is a result of aging. But it isn't. When I was 8 or so, my father took me up on a strip mine to teach me how to ride a bike and I road the bike off the strip mine. So, I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was in 30's.

And getting lost, oh, don't get me started about getting lost. When our kids were little we were on the way to North Carolina for vacation from New Haven and somewhere in Maryland I somehow got on an Interstate that had no traffic on it, which was great, except it suddenly ended and I had to drive our VW bus over the median to go the other way on a yet unopened section of some Interstate I got lost on. Every since then, our son just expected to get lost on any trip we took. More often than not, he was right. Once I was coming back to Cheshire from Wolcott and ended up in New Britain, which, if you look on a map seems an unlikely place to end up....

And if 'opening things'--or, more correctly, 'not being able to open things' is a category of Clumsy, well, I can't open anything without a sharp knife and a screwdriver. But this piece has gotten worse with age because 'packaging' has become an art form. Lots of people I know who used to be able to open things can't now. Progress, that's what they call it, ironically. "True Progress" would be making things easier to open, it seems to me....

Don't drop or bump into anything and don't get lost or trip. "Opening things", in that you're on your own....